Dessert Recipes — The Building Blocks of Great Baking

Some recipes stand on their own as a finished dessert. Others are the building blocks that make everything else better. This collection holds both.

You'll find showstopping desserts here - the kind you bring to a gathering and people ask for the recipe before the evening is over. The Gluten-Free Flourless Brownies have converted more than a few people who claimed they didn't like "healthy" baking. The Lemon Meringue Bars have a Swiss meringue topping that looks like it came from a bakery window. The No Bake Peanut Butter Pie with an Oreo crust takes 20 minutes to assemble and disappears in about the same amount of time.

And the foundation recipes that belong in every home baker's rotation:

The Homemade Caramel Sauce takes 20 minutes and makes a jar you'll reach for every week - over ice cream, poured into cinnamon rolls, layered into shortbread bars. The Swiss Meringue and Swiss Meringue Buttercream are the frosting techniques I use on almost every layer cake on this site, because once you learn them you never go back to a grainy American buttercream. The Lemon Curd is the base for the lemon bars and a dozen other uses I'll show you along the way.

Learning these foundational recipes isn't about being fancy. It's about building a kitchen vocabulary that makes every other recipe you attempt more intuitive and more delicious.

Start anywhere below. If you're not sure where to begin, the No Bake Oatmeal Cookies and the Flourless Brownies are where most people land first.