Easy dessert recipes

Homemade desserts can be intimidating. A lot of them involve baking, which is really a cross between engineering and chemistry, no matter how easy some people make it look. Or they take up more time than many of us have.

Cupcakes are one type of dessert that’s quick and easy to make, and we’ve got your cupcake recipes right here. But your sweet tooth probably can’t survive on nothing but cupcakes. So here’s a collection of dessert recipes that don’t require much work from you – most of them are fast, too:

Easy Dessert Recipes

1. M & M’s Cheesecake Squares Recipe – little individual-sized cheesecake squares with M & M’s between the crust and the cheesecake itself.
2. Turtle Cake II – caramel candy melted into chocolate cake with pecans. You won’t believe how easy this one is.
3. No-bake Vanilla Cheesecake with a Thin Mint crust – uses Thin Mint type cookies (like the ones Girl Scouts sell) to make the crust
4. Cinnamon Coffee Bars – if you leave out the raisins, you cut out a step and, in my humble opinion, it tastes better (but then I’m not crazy about raisins generally)
5. Chocolate Velvet Pie – aside from melting chocolate, there’s no real cooking to this recipe
6. Pumpkin Streusel Squares – easier than pumpkin pie, but similarly tasty and fun
7. Eclair Cake – ridiculously easy, and so beautiful and yummy. Uses vanilla instant pudding and graham crackers as the basis
8. Fried Cinnamon Strips – inspired by churros, a type of “Mexican donut” sold by street vendors
9. Rum No Bake Cake Recipe – it’s got rum. It’s got chocolate. It doesn’t got cooking. What else could you want in a dessert?
10. Cake Mix Cookies – four recipes for making cookies from cake mixes
11. Easy Fudge Brownies – just a very simple brownie recipe that’s quick and easy
12. Amaretto Mousse – uses amaretto liqueur, but you could use any other liqueur you want, and the results will be very predictable. Yum!
13. Pistachio Ambrosia – ambrosias are a long time standby of busy people. It’s just a fruit salad with nuts, chilled with a creamy topping
14. Easy Peach Cobbler – an authentic peach cobbler recipe that’s easy and quick enough to make on the fly
15. Petit Pain au Chocolat – this one is basically about putting Tollhouse morsels into frozen croissants and then baking them
16. Apple Plum Struesel – Golden Delicious apples and plums baked in together
17. Butterfinger Cheesecake Bites – cooks Butterfinger candy bars into little individual-sized cheesecakes
18. Coconut Peach Crunch Pie – a peach filling pie topped with a coconut crust
19. Self-frosting Chocolate Fudge Cake – if only all cakes were as smart as this one!
20. Chocolate Peanut Butter Strudel – uses a puff pastry mix, peanut butter and chocolate chips
21. Chocolate Fantasy Nut Bars Recipe – based on a chocolate cake mix. So simple!
22. Maple Toffee Shortbread – kind of like a Heath bar in bread form.
23. Sugar and Spice Ice Cream Sandwiches – ice cream sandwiches with cocoa, cinnamon, ginger and more wonderful spices to make this traditional treat seem brand new
24. Easy Coffee Cake Recipe – designed for people who seriously cannot be bothered to make homemade desserts
25. Southern Style Rice Pudding – not many steps for this traditional Southern favorite
26. Dirt Dessert – made in a flower pot so it actually looks like you’re serving guests dirt from a potted plant!
27. Double Lemon Delight – a wonderful recipe for lemon cookies
28. Basic Vanilla Cake – like it says, basic, but a classic
29. Strawberry Angel Food Dessert – you know any recipe that starts out with “angel food cake, torn into pieces” wants to make your life easier
30. Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Parfaits – the hardest thing about putting this one together is getting the parfait layers spooned in just right
31. Easy Southern Banana Pudding – a traditional American dessert, using Nilla wafers and sliced bananas to dress up what would otherwise just be instant putting
32. Rolo Pretzel Turtles – It’s made out of Rolo candies! This is the dessert some of you have been waiting for all your lives!
33. Easy Butterscotch Dessert – Butter. Nuts. Some other stuff, and you can throw this all together easy-peasy
34. No-bake Peanut Butter Squares – makes some use of the microwave to avoid baking.
35. S’mores Toffee Almond Bars – another fabulous use of Heath Bars from Hershey’s recipes
36. Death by Chocolate – super intense chocolate flavor will shock you
37. Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting – an especially good carrot cake recipe that’s not hard at all to make
38. Fluffy Flavored Pancakes – pancake mix with a chocolate maple syrup
39. Easy Chocolate Fondue Recipe – whip up a simple fondue chocolate recipe, then dip anything you like in it
40. Fifteens – graham crackers, cherries, marshmallows and coconut shavings
41. Vanilla Sugar Cookies – quick and easy, with a light and wonderful taste
42. Baklava – easy, but authentic and delicious
43. Easy Ice Cream Dessert – basically, you’re making your own cookies and fudge ice cream out of whatever ice cream flavor you like
44. Gourmet Chocolate Candy Recipe – making chocolate candies can be easier than you’d imagine
45. Almond Bark Drop Cookies – white chocolate almond bark, marshmallows and peanut butter make a surprisingly great cookie!
46. Silky Chocolate Pudding – SmittenKitchen has a fantastic recipe that’s not too heavy or rich – or sweet. But don’t worry – the calories are there!