Our Best Easter Dessert Recipes
Family and guests will love these Easter dessert recipes including Easter cakes, cupcakes, cookies and pies.
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Doughnut Bundt
Nutmeg is the secret ingredient that makes this playful Bundt taste just like a cake doughnut. (Be sure to use freshly grated nutmeg—you'll really notice the difference in flavor.) It's the perfect ending for an Easter brunch or dinner.
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Vanilla Crepe Cake
This cake by chef Gavin Kaysen of Bellecour Bakery in the Twin Cities will wow guests with its many layers, luscious creaminess and subtle vanilla flavor.
Related: Ultimate Cake Recipes
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Carrot-Spice Cake with Coconut-Pecan Filling
This recipe kicks carrot cake to elegant new heights. Tender layers of carrot-tinted spice cake are sandwiched with a luscious coconut-pecan filling—and it's all covered in swirls of classic cream cheese frosting. It's an event to make (plan for some dish-washing), but well worth the effort. To spread the work over two days, make the carrot puree and start the Coconut-Pecan Fluff Filling on Day 1 and let them chill overnight. Then finish it all off on Day 2.
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Pound cake
St. Louis pastry chef Nathaniel Reid gives pound cake a chic, patisserie-style makeover. Your trusty loaf pan never had it so good. Here are a few crowd-pleasing pound cake flavors to try:
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Lemon Sugar Cookies
The light lemon flavor gives these sparkling sugar cookies a little special twist. Judy Kiburz Harrison's recipe won best-in-class at the Iowa State Fair—and they'll sparkle on your Easter table, too.
Related: The Midwest's Best Cookie Recipes
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Double-Malted Easter Snack Mix
Malted milk powder and chopped malted Easter egg candies give this festive sweet-and-salty springtime snack mix a double hit of malt-shop flavor.
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Seven-or-So Layer Cake
Impress Easter guests with this layer cake made from almond cake and rich mocha glaze. Our sheet pan technique makes prep extra simple.Â
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Strawberry Charlotte
This old-fashioned cake holds up to slicing after 6 hours, but the cookies soften more with a longer rest, making it a make-ahead dream.
Related: Strawberry Dessert Recipes
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Sunny-Side Up Pavlovas
Perfect farm-fresh eggs are the inspiration for these crisp, mini meringues topped with cream and lemon curd. Serve au naturel or scatter them with fresh mint leaves, if you like.
Related: Sparkling Spring Dessert Recipes
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Carrot and Honey Upside-Down Minis
Sweetly vying for a spot on your Easter brunch table, these cinnamony whole-wheat cakes bake over nests of glazed carrots. Serve warm with extra honey for drizzling.
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Pear Tarte Tatin
Just seven ingredients go into this beautiful upside-down French tart. And one of them is très-easy purchased puff pastry. (Choose an all-butter pastry, such as Dufour or the Trader Joe's house brand, for the best flavor.)
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Lemon Curd Tart
"The lemon curd is one of our favorite workhorses," says Patrick Groth of Incredibly Delicious in Springfield, Illinois.Â
Related: Luscious Lemon Dessert Recipes
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Cutie-Pie Carrot Cake
Cream cheese frosting is always the answer, especially when it's on a 6-inch cake that's perfectly sized for life's celebrations.
Related: 6 Mini Cake Recipes
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Choose-a-Fruit Fool
Craving a light and airy dessert? Our goof-proof fools call for just four simple ingredients: your favorite fruit, granulated sugar, whipping cream and vanilla.Â
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Raspberry Cream Tart
Fresh berries work best in this elegant dessert (frozen berries get too watery). Keep fruit refrigerated and dry and use within a couple of days of purchase.
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Apricot-Rosemary Streusel Bars
A rich, fruity filling bakes in a rosemary-infused crust, then gets drizzled with a powdered sugar icing.
Related: Our Best Bar Cookies
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Peach Cordial Mini Bundt Cakes
The memory of a childhood orchard trip inspired Melinsa Murphey of Olathe, Kansas, to create this peach dessert recipe. The cakes are moist and sweet and quite generously proportioned, so you may want to serve a half-cake to each person (or bake them in muffin cups instead).
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Pistachio Pavlova with Fresh Berries
Mildly nutty meringue cradles fresh berries in this classic dessert named for a ballerina. Use your favorite nut to flavor the meringue. Our Test Kitchen recommends pistachios, almonds or pecans. Any fruit works: blueberries, kiwi, bananas.
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Baby Citrus Cheesecakes
These cupcake-size treats are a fantastically simple alternative to a full-size cheesecake. You could also garnish them with fresh raspberries or blueberries.
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Tres Leches Cake
A Mexican standard and guaranteed backyard crowd-pleaser, our brown-sugar sheet cake is soaked in milky syrup, chilled, then topped with whipped cream and berries.
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Peach Cake Roll
Based on a recipe from Michigan Peach Sponsors, this cake roll is a flavor chameleon. Swirl in any ice cream you like, and top the cake with any complementary fruit.
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Key Lime Coconut Cake with Marshmallow Frosting
Billowy Meringue Frosting tops a moist and buttery lime-flecked cake whose subtle coconut flavor comes from canned cream of coconut.
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Raspberry Cheesecake Bars
Layers of cheesecake, raspberry filling, almonds and coconut form dessert bars perfect for an Easter buffet.
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Coconut Cake
This three-layer wonder stays extra moist thanks to butter and buttermilk. The blue-ribbon recipe is from Teresa Reese of Osceola, Nebraska.
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Lemon-Cream Cheese Pie
This longtime reader-favorite recipe makes two pies; if you like, freeze one. To thaw, let the frozen pie stand in the fridge overnight.
Related: Make Your Best Pie Ever