Desserts. Atanas Paskalev / Pixabay.com / 2019 / CC0 1.0
Desserts can be served room-temperature, warm, hot, chilled or frozen. They are usually a sweet food, but the dessert course can include a savoury item such as cheese, or nuts.
Recipes in this section have largely been selected to illustrate or support entries in the encyclopaedia.
See also: Desserts (main entry)
A fabulous loaf that couldn’t be less fuss.
Anzac Biscuits are crisp oatmeal cookies that are very good with tea. Various associations in Australia and New Zealand make them around Anzac Day to fundraise for veterans.
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A lovely warming, filling dessert, so save room for it.
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Very, very good.
Every apple pie recipe is great, and the best tasting apple pie is the one that you didn’t have to make but get to eat. But, here’s a recipe to how bakery “professionals” approach an apple pie, if you’re curious. It’s the method that is taught in some pastry classes.
This is an apple pie that tastes like the most wonderful old-fashioned apple pie in the world, but it has three surprises: a phyllo pastry crust, a layer of custard hiding under the apples, and, it’s incredibly low in calories.
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Very delicious, with a rich enough taste to set out at special occasions.
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These squares look beautiful, are chewy and crunchy, and are a real crowd pleaser.
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A simple, fruity dessert, especially for those who are finicky about eating fresh fruit.
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Feel free to doctor this rice pudding recipe up with either dried fruits or other flavourings.
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A classic English dessert.
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A very interesting and yummy way to present mincemeat. Nice served warm.
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This banana bread is so tropical, you’ll almost be tempted to serve it with a paper umbrella sticking out of each slice.
This is a dessert that you make partly on the barbeque grill, which is interesting, as there are very few dessert recipes that involve actually using the barbeque. This is also a fun recipe for kids to make (with adult supervision) and can provide an opportunity to introduce them to barbeque safety.
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You serve this as a dessert pie. They’ll probably think it’s pumpkin.
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They’ll never know there’s beet in it.
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A classic blonde brownie recipe.
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A very interesting use for polenta!
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A classic North American drop cookie recipe. Recipe from: Fannie Merritt Farmer.
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A classic pecan pie recipe.
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A very easy candy to make at home.
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Butter tarts are a traditional Canadian (and Scottish) dessert.
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A nice, yummy rice pudding.
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A very good, comfort-food dessert.
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A classic English pudding recipe.
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A very quick trifle recipe.
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The name says it all; these are rich and fabulous.
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A very rich, delicious no-bake cake.
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This is a great recipe to get kids to make, with your supervision.
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Looks fabulous, and tastes just as great. A really fun recipe to make.
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This is so easy that the package mixes for these kinds of puddings really don’t save you much work.
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A great way to serve leftover Christmas cake as a whole new dessert. You can make these the day before or in the morning.
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This recipe requires a food processor, but on the upside, a food processor makes it lightning fast.
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This is a real mid-Atlantic dish: British mincemeat meets North American cranberries, pecans and corn syrup. And it is really good.
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If you really want to impress your friends, tell them this is crème anglaise brûlée. It’s really just custard with hardened, melted sugar on top.
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Recipes with surprise attached to their name are legion — and often the surprise is lunch bag letdown. This one is truly worthy of its name.
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The tartness of the rhubarb acts as a foil to the richness of the custard.
A Dutch baby pancake is a fabulous weekend brunch dish.
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A classic war-time rations cake. The dried raisins would have been replaced by whatever dried fruit could be had.
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This recipe drew on ingredients from various parts of the British Empire: the flour from Canada, the brown sugar from Barbados, the orange (originally a Jaffa orange) from Palestine, dried and candied fruits from South Africa. Hence its name.
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These look gorgeous and people will think you slaved for hours, but they are dead easy.
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If you want a fancy presentation, you can put this in one of those loose-bottomed pie / quiche pans whose bottom pops out. Otherwise, use whatever type of pie dish you have to hand, preferably a 9 inch / 23cm round pie tin.
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These fools are very easy to make, with a great refreshing taste. They are also a healthy dessert, with the fruit, the ginger and the yoghurt.
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The upside of this cake is that it’s a make-ahead cake. That’s also the downside — don’t plan on serving it a few hours from now.
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These are classic North American drop cookies.
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Marmalade lovers will make this disappear in an instant.
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This is an ideal way to use up end bits of jam left in jam jars or pots.
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This is a really easy dessert! Use whatever jam you like, or use marmalade. Lovely served with cream or custard.
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Very nice while still warm. Use whatever kind of jam you fancy.
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A rich rice pudding, whose taste is lightened by the addition of lemon.
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You can make the crust or buy it frozen and ready to cook.
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A posset is a thin, custard-like chilled dessert. This recipe for a Lemon Posset is dead easy to make.
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A puddle of lemon sauce will form under the sponge cake part of the pudding during cooking.
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There are very few recipes where you actually need to fuss about using fresh versus dried herbs, but this is one where the dried version of rosemary just wouldn’t do it.
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Beautiful and easy dessert squares from the mid 1900s.
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This is a Roman recipe, often pointed to as an early example of cheesecake.
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An old recipe, this is somewhat like a sweetened, flavoured bread pudding baked in a pie shell. Adapted from Mrs Beeton.
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This is dead easy, and your guests will hoover these up. And, it looks stunning.
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This is a butter-based icing for cakes, deriving its flavour from real maple syrup, rather than artificial maple flavouring. Very sweet, as you are adding sugar to sugar!
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Marlborough Pudding is a classic, old English dessert that came over to America with the colonists.
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The chocolate and marmalade tastes together are fantastic.
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The thicker cut your marmalade is, the better for this recipe.
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Nice with a pouring custard, or a spooning cream such as extra-thick double cream.
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A classic Marzipan recipe.
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For those with nut allergies, you can use another flavouring such as orange or rosewater, if you wish.
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A classic but still impressive recipe.
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A gorgeous, drop-dead easy dessert made possible by the modern miracle of the microwave. You will only dirty two dishes in making this dessert, plus 1 spoon and whatever you zested the orange with.
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This recipe used to be an American favourite at Thanksgiving.
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A classic sponge cake that despite its spagna name is actually Italian. The only leavener it uses is the good old-fashioned get as much air into it as you can method.
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This cake is traditionally made a day or two ahead of Guy Fawke’s Night, then served on the night at the bonfire gathering.
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This is the Italian version of shortcrust pastry, or the French Pâte Sucrée.
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A gluten free pastry recipe.
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No one will guess this is made from beets. They break down completely, and the jam comes out a treacly brown.
This is a classic, famous, no-bake Christmas fruitcake recipe, dating back to at least 1954.
This is a standard recipe for pie crust (aka shortcrust pastry), as was taught for decades in home economics classrooms.
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A lovely, moist plum cake.
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This recipe is for 1 serving, but is easily multiplied. It makes a very quick and simple but delicious and satisfying pudding.
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This is a monumental recipe, both in the quantity of cookies it makes, and in the breathtaking fashion with which it calls for sugar, lard, and meat, of all things.
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With a name like this, who is going to be able to resist trying them?
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Use as a topping for meat or fruit pies, sausage rolls, etc, where you want a flaky crust but don’t need the rise. Don’t use this in recipes where the pastry needs to really rise, such as vol-au-vents, etc.
This is a luxurious combination of two of the best tastes from two favourite holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The smoothness of the pumpkin custard acts as the perfect foil to the richness of the mincemeat.
This pumpkin pie has the classic pumpkin pie taste that everyone loves, but it’s lost a boatload of calories so you can indulge in it without giving it a second thought. As an added bonus, this pie is quick to assemble, and though it takes an hour to bake, none of that time needs your Go to recipe
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If you’re pumpkin pie-d out and still have some pumpkin to use up, try these, they are very good.
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Dead easy! Some people say to make this cake a day or two in advance before serving.
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One of the classic bread pudding recipes. It’s amazing how light this dessert tastes.
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Especially useful for those times when you’re caught off guard by someone in the park having a birthday. Just whip this together, give your double-wide a once-through for a quick tidy, and you’re ready to rock!
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A good old-fashioned dessert, easy to take to group events. You only dirty a bowl and a saucepan in preparing it.
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A recipe for classic practical dessert squares — easy to make, not too expensive, easy to transport, yet still a crowd-pleaser.
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Use red berries such as raspberries, strawberries, red currants, etc. Come to think of it, there’s actually no reason the berries have to be red, but a mixture of at least two is nice.
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The rhubarb cuts nicely through the custard richness of this pudding.
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This recipe uses a food processor to speed things along. You can make it manually instead if you need to.
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The Romans called this type of pie a crostata. The Romans did not have nice round pie tins like we do, so they had to turn up the edges of their dough to make a free form tart.
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If ever you were itching for a chance to use spelt flour, here you go. It’s more authentic in this recipe: it’s what the Romans would have used.
Delicious rice pudding with classic flavours; very little work.
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Dead easy, but watch it fly off the plate. The shakers used rosewater, but you could substitute vanilla extract.
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Despite all the molasses, this pie is rich, rather than overly sweet.
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Classic English cookies.
Soul Cakes are a traditional English dessert that makes its appearance on All Soul’s Day. Though the English refer to them as (small) cakes, North Americans would likely say cookies.
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If you haven’t made a steamed pudding before, we have simple guidelines!
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If you haven’t made a steamed pudding before, we have simple guidelines!
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A lower-fat but still yummy version of an English classic dessert.
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If you haven’t made a steamed pudding before, we have simple guidelines!
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Lovely squares that aren’t too expensive to make.
The classic English summer dessert. The simplicity of the ingredients is deceptive; the tastes of this are very sophisticated.
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Good to have on hand for guests. Keep it wrapped in tin foil or plastic wrap.
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Even those who are sometimes leery of pears owing to their texture will love this cake.
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A very morish, inexpensive dessert to make.
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If you have a sweet tooth, this is at the top of the list for fudges. You may want some strong coffee to wash this down with.
A classic English cake.
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You’ll never find a simpler pie to make — or a harder one to keep people’s hands off of until dinner time.
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Though not exactly actually whipped, whipped shortbread cookies are much lighter than regular shortbread, and almost melt in your mouth.
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This is an authentic Italian recipe. It’s also a great recipe for late summer (August) when everyone is looking for ways to use up all the zucchini and basil that is suddenly available and dirt cheap.