Dessert/5 recipes

Old-fashioned chocolate cream pie with cocoa, milk, and egg yolk custard cooked in a double boiler. The Grandma classic with deep chocolate flavor and silky pudding texture.

Hungarian poppy seed wafers with fresh orange zest, allspice, and a smooth powdered sugar glaze. Piped butter cookies with warm spice and citrus flavor.

Layers of pecan shortbread crust, whipped cream cheese, chocolate pudding, and billowy whipped topping stacked into a cool, creamy no-bake dessert. Feeds 12 and vanishes even faster.

Coconut meringue cookies shaped into little bird nests and filled with candy eggs or jelly beans. A show-stopping Easter dessert that's crisp, light as air, and gluten-free. Makes 20 nests.

Chocolate toffee flan cakes: no-bake dessert with marshmallow cream filling, melted chocolate, whipped topping, and chopped Heath bar crowns. Quick make-ahead party sweet.

A golden double-crust pie bursting with fresh nectarines, cinnamon, and lemon zest. No peeling needed, making this the easiest summer stone fruit pie you'll bake.

Frozen pumpkin ice cream pie in a gingersnap crust with cinnamon-spiked vanilla ice cream and pumpkin whipped cream, finished with warm caramel pecan sauce poured over each slice.

Baked fig and raisin pudding with crumbled waffle cookies, cocoa, walnuts, and warm spices, cooked in a water bath. A rich, old-fashioned holiday dessert served warm with hard sauce.

European-style apple tart with a buttery crumb crust pressed into a flan pan. Grated apples layered with cinnamon and sugar, topped with a pastry apple design. Best served cold for clean slicing.

Easy cherry cheesecake tarts use frozen puff pastry shells filled with almond-spiked cream cheese and cherry pie filling. Buttery, flaky, and assembled in under an hour. Four-ingredient dessert.

A no-bake strawberry cream cheese pie with fluffy whipped cream filling, fresh berries on top, and a glossy currant jelly glaze. Can be frozen overnight for easy entertaining.

Plum torte presses Italian prune plums into a buttery cake batter, dusts with cinnamon-sugar and lemon juice, and bakes for an hour. The classic NYT September torte that freezes for winter.

Homemade cranberries jelly, not much time, goes well!

No-bake blueberry white chocolate cheese pie with a toasted hazelnut crust. Piped cream cheese filling, melted white chocolate, and a heap of fresh berries.

Microwave coffee cake bakes a cinnamon-sugar topped tender crumb cake in just 6 minutes, then finishes under the broiler for a caramelized crackly top. Coffee break ready.

Italian chocolate cookies with cocoa, cinnamon, cold coffee, and grape jelly in the dough. An old-world recipe with no eggs that makes a huge batch of soft, cakey cookies.