Desserts

Desserts Recipes

404 recipes. Page 1 of 17

Sweet dessert and snack recipes

Alfajores (Argentine Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies)

Cornstarch makes up a large share of the flour in these cookies, which is why they crumble so tenderly before the thick layer of dulce de leche in the middle takes over. Dulce de leche, milk cooked down slowly into caramel, has a strong toffee flavor, so the cookies themselves are kept plain. The sweet traces back to medieval Andalusia, but this round sandwich form took shape in 19th-century Argentina and Uruguay. Pulled from the oven before they color, the rounds stay pale and soft.

Prep 25min Cook 12min 4 servings

Rice Medium

Akita Asazuke (Chilled Sweet-and-Sour Rice)

The name sounds like a vegetable pickle, but this Akita dish is mostly a chilled rice base cooked with sugar and sharpened with vinegar. Soaked rice is ground with a few grains left whole, which gives it a slightly nubbly texture. Cucumber and turnip go in only once the base is completely cold, to keep their crunch, and seasonal fruit sits on top.

Prep 210min Cook 25min 10 servings

Street food Medium

Korean Fish-Shaped Bread (Sweet Red Bean Filled Wheat Waffle)

Baked in a fish-shaped mold, bungeoppang have a thin golden shell, a crisp tail made of batter alone, and red bean paste in the belly. The batter is kept a little thinner than pancake batter, thin enough to run into every corner of the tail and belly pattern. Keeping the bean paste in the center of the belly, away from the edges, stops it from leaking when the mold closes.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 8 servings

Desserts Easy

Acai Bowl

Frozen acai blended with banana, blueberries, and Greek yogurt turns into a thick, deep purple base like sorbet, with an earthy, almost cocoa-like note behind the berry flavor. The acai palm grows in the Amazon basin, and the bowl format topped with granola, fruit, and honey spread from Rio de Janeiro surf culture in the 1980s. The contrast between cold base and crunchy granola fades fast, so it goes to the table right away.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 10min 0 2 servings

Drinks Easy

Baesuk (Korean Poached Pear Punch)

Ginger and black peppercorns steep first and are strained out, and the pear poaches in that liquid, so the punch carries their warmth without a single peppercorn in the cup. Before any honey goes in, the sweetness comes from the pear itself. It can be drunk warm right away, but for a chilled holiday table it is made the day before and rested overnight in the fridge, with pine nuts floated on just before serving.

Prep 15min Cook 35min 4 servings

Pancakes Easy

Korean Sweet Pumpkin Pancake

Steamed kabocha is mashed while hot, kneaded with glutinous rice flour and pressed into small flat rounds for the pan. A little sugar makes them closer to a snack than a side dish, and the rice flour gives the inside a chewy, rice-cake texture.

Prep 18min Cook 10min 2 servings

Noodles Medium

Azuki Batto (Wide Noodles in Sweet Red Bean Soup)

Wide, hand-cut wheat noodles simmer briefly in a warm, sweet red bean soup, making a dessert that eats like a bowl of noodles. Coarse zarame sugar gives the beans a clean, pronounced sweetness, with a pinch of salt to round it out. Floating is not proof the noodles are done; the thickest strand gets split open to look for raw flour.

Prep 50min Cook 90min 5 servings

Salads Easy

Fruit Salad (Fresh Seasonal Fruit in Yogurt)

Crisp apple and kiwi, soft banana, and tart strawberries and blueberries end up together in each spoonful, held by plain yogurt sweetened only with honey and sharpened with lemon. Cutting the fruit to a similar size keeps every bite even. The lemon juice does a second job, slowing the apple from turning brown. Banana softens fastest of all, so it joins the bowl last, after everything else is coated. Ten minutes in the fridge lets the fruit juices loosen the yogurt into a lighter, glossier coating.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 20min 0 4 servings

Baking Easy

Almond Biscotti

Shaped into a flat log, baked once, sliced on the diagonal, and baked again at a lower temperature, these Tuscan cookies earn their name, which means twice-cooked. The second bake dries them until they are hard rather than merely crisp, a style long associated with Prato. Whole almonds give each slice a toasty crunch, and lemon zest and vanilla scent the dough. Dunked in espresso or vin santo, the outside softens while the center holds firm.

Prep 15min Cook 45min 24 servings

Rice Medium

Sweet Red Bean Porridge (Korean Adzuki Rice Dessert Soup)

Only two-thirds of the cooked red beans are pushed through a sieve; the rest stay whole, so there are beans to bite into in the thick porridge. The glutinous rice balls (saealsim) need a little more time after they float to cook through to the center.

Prep 15min Cook 50min 2 servings

Street food Easy

Korean Glutinous Rice Donut

Glutinous rice dough sinks to the bottom of the oil at first and only puffs up and floats a little later. Until it rises, leave it alone. The shell is thin and crisp, the inside stretches like rice cake, and the sugar goes on once they have cooled to warm.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 8 servings

Desserts Easy

Affogato

Hot espresso melts the outside of the vanilla ice cream into a coffee layer while the center stays cold, and each spoonful carries both temperatures. Affogato means drowned in Italian, after the ice cream sitting in coffee. In this version dark chocolate and cocoa add bitterness, toasted almond slices add crunch, and a tiny pinch of salt finishes it.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 5min Cook 2min 2 servings

Drinks Easy

Sweet Pumpkin Rice Punch (Korean Kabocha Malt Drink)

Steamed kabocha mashed into the finished malt punch turns ordinary sikhye a deep golden orange and gives it noticeably more body. The base sweetness still comes from malted barley working on cooked rice during a long warm hold; the pumpkin adds weight and color rather than replacing that step. Thin slices of ginger steep with the rice, leaving a faint heat in the finish that stops the pumpkin from tasting cloying. Served cold with a few rice grains floating on top, it sits somewhere between a drink and a light dessert.

Prep 20min Cook 70min 4 servings

Pancakes Medium

Flower Rice Pancakes (Glutinous Rice Cakes with Edible Flowers)

Small flat rounds of glutinous rice dough get edible petals pressed into them while the top is still slightly sticky, so the flowers set into the surface instead of sitting loose. The flower changes the character: azalea gives a faint floral note, chrysanthemum a quieter herbal one, rose a soft sweetness. The dough itself has no sugar, so honey on the side brings sweetness and pine nuts add a resinous richness to the last bite.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 2 servings

Baking Easy

Almond Croissant

Croissants split, filled with almond cream, spread with a little more on top, and pressed with sliced almonds return to the oven for a second bake. Slightly stale croissants work well: French bakeries first made these to rescue day-old stock. Paris bakeries now make them on purpose with freshly baked croissants too. As they bake, the cream melts into a moist, marzipan-like filling, the almonds turn golden and crisp, and the bottoms go a little sticky.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 6 servings

Rice Easy

Sweet Pumpkin Porridge (Korean Kabocha Glutinous Rice Porridge)

Steamed kabocha is pureed and thickened with glutinous rice flour, so the porridge is completely smooth, with no grains of rice. Milk rounds out the sweetness, and a few pine nuts go on top.

Prep 15min Cook 25min 2 servings

Street food Medium

Chapssal Kkwabaegi (Glutinous Rice Twist Donuts)

This yeasted dough uses more glutinous rice flour than bread flour, which gives the inside a stretchy, chewy pull that plain wheat donuts lack. Rolled in cinnamon sugar straight from the fryer, the donuts melt a little of the sugar with their own heat, leaving a thin crust that follows every turn of the twist.

At least 1 hr 4 min 4 servings

Desserts Medium

Akaneko (Wheat and Glutinous Rice Mochi)

Pull a piece and it breaks off cleanly instead of stretching the way all-rice mochi does. That is the wheat at work: a soft flour dough steams in the same basket as the glutinous rice, and the two are pounded together while hot. In the Nakakawachi and Minamikawachi areas of Osaka it was made around Hangesho, once rice planting was done, to give thanks and pray for a good harvest, and it is rolled in sugared kinako.

Prep 50min Cook 40min 4 servings

Drinks Easy

Schisandra Fruit Punch (Korean Cold-Brewed Berry Fruit Bowl)

The broth for this punch comes from schisandra berries left in cold water for two hours or more. Honey is stirred into the red liquid and it goes into the fridge, while the pear and watermelon are scooped into balls only just before serving and floated with ice. Fruit left soaking in the punch goes soft quickly.

Prep 15min Cook 5min 4 servings

Baking Easy

Red Bean and Butter Bread

Instead of a thin spread, cold butter is cut into slices about 0.8 cm thick that stay firm against the soft red bean paste. Only the cut faces of the ciabatta are toasted briefly, which crisps the surface without drying out the rest of the bread. Spreading the paste right to the edges puts sweet bean and rich butter in the same bite.

Prep 20min Cook 15min 2 servings

Rice Medium

Korean Red Bean Porridge (Velvety Adzuki Porridge with Rice Dumplings)

Pushing only half of the cooked adzuki beans through a sieve and leaving the rest whole makes the porridge velvety while keeping whole beans and soft glutinous rice balls (saealsim) to bite into. Koreans traditionally eat it on the winter solstice (dongji).

Prep 30min Cook 60min 4 servings

Street food Medium

Korean Chocolate Custard Bungeoppang

Cocoa turns the batter dark brown in the mold, and a chocolate custard sits inside. Since the shell is dark from the start, its color says little about whether it is done. A skewer poked into the shell, away from the custard, settles it: no raw batter means it is ready.

Prep 20min Cook 18min 4 servings

Desserts Hard

Akumaki (Lye-Cooked Glutinous Rice Cake)

Glutinous rice soaked a full day in food-grade lye water, wrapped in bamboo sheath and boiled for about three hours, ends up with no grain left to see, just a glossy, amber, jelly-like block. The cake itself is unsweetened, so it is sliced and served with kinako. Use only lye water sold for cooking, and keep it off bare skin.

Prep 40min Cook 180min 15 servings

Drinks Medium

Sweet Rice Punch (Traditional Korean Malted Barley Grain Drink)

The malt water is left to stand until the sediment sinks, and only the clear top is poured off; heat the sediment along with it and the punch turns cloudy. When the rice grains start to float they are lifted out and rinsed in cold water, and the remaining liquid boils again with sugar and sliced ginger. The ginger is never strong, just a slight warmth at the very end.

Prep 20min Cook 180min 4 servings