21 Easy Desserts You Can Make in Under an Hour
Because homemade treats are the best treats!
When you’re already making a full meal, dessert is likely the last thing on your mind. Fair enough! It’s nice to have something sweet after dinner, however, and homemade treats are the best kind. Luckily, we have plenty of dessert recipes that take less than an hour to prepare, and won’t result in a million dirty dishes. Strawberries dipped in chocolate totally count, and so does a tower of pre-made cider doughnuts with layers of whipped maple cream cheese.
If you feel like baking, try a biscuit cobbler bursting with berries, or a batch of warmly spiced pumpkin muffins. There’s a treat for everyone in this recipe round-up, so keep reading to find your new favorite easy dessert.
Puff Pastry Cinnamon Rolls
Use pre-made puff pastry to make these flaky treats; they aren’t your classic squishy brioche cinnamon rolls, but they are definitely delicious.
Salty-Sweet Chunkers
These cookies are full of salty-sweet mix-ins like pretzels and marshmallows, but you can swap them with pretty much anything that sounds good in a cookie. M&M’s? Sure! Crushed potato chips? Why not!
Peach Cobbler Trifle
This recipe is more about assembling than cooking, thanks to a store-bought pound cake. Layers of peaches, whipped cream, and pound cake get chilled in the refrigerator before serving for a refreshing, festive, summery dessert.
Honeydew and Blackberry Ice Cream Sundaes
Fruit fiends will love this sundae recipe, which combines blackberry ice cream with fresh honeydew. Add an easy sesame-almond brittle for a sweet, crunchy component.
Cinnamon Spiced Pumpkin Muffins
These tender, cakey muffins include a cup of pure canned pumpkin and plenty of warming spices. Ready in just 35 minutes, they are the perfect fall treat.
Vegan Blueberry Cookies
The vibrant hue of these vegan cookies is completely natural thanks to a generous amount of blueberries. Opt for vegan butter and white chocolate chips so that everyone, including plant-based eaters, can enjoy them.
Mixed Berry Biscuit Cobbler
You can use fresh or frozen berries for this recipe, and switch up the berry varieties depending on what you have on hand. The juicy berries are topped with buttery, fluffy biscuits with golden, sugar-sprinkled tops.
Honey Whole Wheat-Strawberry Clafoutis
A clafoutis sounds and looks extremely elegant, but shhh, it couldn’t be easier to make. This rendition includes fresh strawberries, whole wheat flour, and honey, for a just-sweet-enough clafoutis that could be served for breakfast or dessert.
Related: 35 Easy Fall Desserts That Aren't Apple Pie
Summer Berry Trifle With Elderflower Cream
Berries and whipped cream are a summer classic, and this recipe takes that pairing to another level with crushed cookies for texture, and a splash of elderflower liqueur to flavor the cream.
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Scones
Studded with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts, and drizzled with a caramel glaze, these scones are decadent and delicious. The best part? They’re ready in 30 minutes.
Cinnamon Sugar Cookies
These five-ingredient cookies are a breeze to make thanks to their base of store-bought puff pastry. Sprinkle the puff pastry with a mixture of cinnamon, pecans, and sugar, roll it, slice it, and bake!
Pumpkin Bread Trifle With Pepita Streusel
A trifle is the perfect dessert for when you don’t have much time and want to make something special; there’s no baking involved, and you can adapt it for whatever flavors you love most. This rendition embraces all things pumpkin, with pumpkin seeds, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin bread.
Summer Ambrosia
Fruit salad with marshmallows? Yes, please! You heard it here first: This fruity old-school dessert is back in style, and it’s ridiculously easy to make.
Chocolate-Covered Strawberries
Chocolate-covered strawberries aren’t just for Valentine’s Day. These healthy two-ingredient treats are easy to assemble and a total crowd-pleaser no matter what month it is.
Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Dump Cake
This cake celebrates the pairing of melty dark chocolate and custardy pumpkin. The best part is that the recipe only dirties a few dishes.
Salty Coffee Toffee Bars
These crunchy, chewy toffee bars are a perfect housewarming or holiday gift. Once the bars have hardened and set, you can break them into big shards and store them in glass jars.
Pluot Crumble
If you’re not familiar, pluots are in the stone fruit family—a juicy, sweet cross between apricots and plums. Pistachios give the streusel topping an unexpected twist, and pair beautifully with the pluots.
Related: The 17 Healthiest Fruits to Eat, According to the Nutrition Pros
Easy Chocolate Mousse With Croissant Crumbs
Chocolate mousse is a dinner party hero; it makes everyone happy and can be made in advance. Here, each serving of chocolate mousse gets sprinkled with toasted croissant crumbs, because why not?
Sweet Tahini and Date Truffles
You just need 45 minutes to make these scrumptious chocolate and date truffles. The almond flour gives them a marzipan-like texture, and the fruitiness of the dates pairs well with the slight bitterness of the chocolate and tahini. Quick and indulgent, these truffles might just become your new best friend.
Lemon Pudding Cake
If you have an hour, you have enough time to put together this beautiful, fluffy lemon pudding cake. A bulk of the time is spent with the cake in the oven, and you only need about 15 minutes to put the ingredients together beforehand.
Peanut Ice Cream Sandwiches
This dessert recipe is sort of cheating, since you don't really need to make anything (unless you want to make the cookies or ice cream from scratch, which could put you over an hour). All you need to do is grab some peanut butter cookies to sandwich some peanut-sprinkled vanilla ice cream, and voilà. You have ice cream sandwiches for a bite-sized treat.
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