Our Best Easter Dessert Recipes

St. Louis pastry chef Nathaniel Reid gives pound cake a chic, patisserie-style makeover. Your trusty loaf pan never had it so good.

Double Chocolate Pound Cake

Candied Lemon Pound Cake

Earl Grey and Raspberry Pound Cake

Yogurt Pound Cake with Apricots and Coconut

Hazelnut and Milk Chocolate Pound Cake

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.

Carrot and Honey Upside-Down Minis

When did being vanilla become an insult? This stack of golden crepes and creamy mascarpone is simple, elegant and deceptively delicious. Supermarket crepes are larger than homemade ones, so if you use purchased, you'll need to make an extra half batch of filling, or just make a cake with fewer layers.

Vanilla Bean Crepe Cake

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.

Double-Malted Easter Snack Mix

"The lemon curd is one of our favorite workhorses," says Patrick Groth of Incredibly Delicious in Springfield, Illinois. "My mother, who has worked for us for the last 16 years, is the only one who makes it. Hers is perfect, tart and smooth."

Lemon Curd Tart

Get creative with your cookie-making for Easter! Try piping your designs with our Easter Egg Cookies recipe, or use a cookie cutter with the recipe for Easter Sugar Cookie Cutouts.

Wheat grass makes a cozy resting spot for spring cookies. Look for it in the produce section of major supermarkets, or check at large health food stores.

Easter Egg Cookies

Easter Sugar Cookie Cutouts

The memory of a childhood orchard trip inspired Melinsa Murphey of Olathe, Kansas, to create this 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).

Peach Cordial Mini Bundt Cakes

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.

Pistachio Pavlova with Fresh Berries

These cupcake-size treats are a fantastically simple alternative to a full-size cheesecake. You could also garnish them with fresh raspberries or blueberries.

Baby Citrus Cheesecakes

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.

Tres Leches Cake

Make eating cookies an interactive experience by serving them alongside a jar of sweet-tart homemade lemon curd. The recipes come from Andy Schudlich of Epicure Catering and Cherry Basket Farm in Michigan.

Lemon Curd and Shortbread 

The Sunflower State's wheat crops and native state flower inspired our cupcakes. Frosting piped like petals turns the individual Kansas Sunflower Cupcakes into pretty treats. Wheat germ adds a hearty touch to the buttermilk-vanilla cakes.

Kansas Sunflower Cupcakes

Book club meeting. Mother's Day brunch. A well-deserved raise. Cream cheese frosting is always the answer, especially when it's on a 6-inch cake that's perfectly sized for life's everyday celebrations.

Cutie-Pie Carrot Cake

Cream cheese frosting crowns a rich, moist and nutty carrot cake. Cinnamon and allspice add just the right spiciness.

Best Carrot-Pineapple Cake

This pie earns its triple-lemon name from lemon zest, lemon juice and lemon extract. (You can add lemon slices and whipped cream on top of the baked pie for even more lemony goodness.) A store-bought piecrust speeds prep time.

Triple Lemon Pie

Layering flapjack-like cakes in a springform pan is an easy way to prep this one-of-a-kind dessert. Hints of lime and honey enhance sweet, juicy apricots. Freshly whipped cream tops this potluck star.

Apricot Stack Cake

Fresh fruit tops crispy-chewy meringue and whipped cream in this luscious dessert traditionally served at summer celebrations in New Zealand and Australia.

Chocolate Pavlova

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.

Raspberry Cream Tart

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.

Peach Cake Roll

Do you love strawberries dipped in chocolate? This recipe puts the same flavor combination into a beautiful, easy-to-make layer cake.

Strawberry-Chocolate Cake

A rich, fruity filling bakes in a rosemary-infused crust, then gets drizzled with a powdered sugar icing.

Apricot-Rosemary Streusel Bars

Billowy Meringue Frosting tops a moist and buttery lime-flecked cake whose subtle coconut flavor comes from canned cream of coconut.

Key Lime Coconut Cake with Marshmallow Frosting

Strawberry-rhubarb pie filling gets a touch of zesty ginger flavor, then goes into a slice-and-bake crust.

Best-Ever Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

Layers of cheesecake, raspberry filling, almonds and coconut form dessert bars perfect for summer picnics and potlucks.

Raspberry Cheesecake Bars

Irresistible tangy lemon and rich pecans flavor one of the easiest cookies around: buttery shortbread. Serve with a cool dish of ice cream in warm weather or a hot cup of tea when it's chilly outside.

Lemon-Pecan Shortbread Cookies

This three-layer wonder stays extra moist thanks to butter and buttermilk. The blue-ribbon recipe is from Teresa Reese of Osceola, Nebraska.

Coconut Cake 

This longtime reader-favorite recipe makes two pies; if you like, freeze one. To thaw, let the frozen pie stand in the fridge overnight.

Lemon-Cream Cheese Pie

An orange-flavor ladyfinger crust surrounds an airy strawberry filling that calls for light whipped dessert topping and beaten egg whites.

Strawberry Chiffon Dessert

Lemon liqueur and lemon zest flavor these cupcakes, while swirled lemon frosting adds an elegant topping. Finish with glazed lemon slices or crushed lemon drop candies.

Lemon Drop Cupcakes

Click or tap below for recipes for Easter breakfast, brunch or dinner, including egg dishes, quiches, breakfast casseroles, ham, muffins and more.