Milk Street's Best Desserts of 2025

Browned Butter Gâteau Magique

Gâteau magique, or magic cake, is a French dessert that lives up to its name. During baking, its seven-ingredient batter separates into three layers: a firm, flan-like bottom, a creamy, pudding-like center and a puffy, souffléed crown. Our version get

By Hisham Ali HassanDecember 17, 2024

Amalfi-Style Lemon Cake

"I married her just for the lemon cake," a sixth-generation Amalfi lemon farmer told us.

By Rose HattabaughOctober 22, 2021

Mexican Sweet Corn Cake

This super versatile reader favorite makes a light and sweet breakfast, dessert, or anytime snack. And it's made in a blender!

By Calvin CoxMarch 25, 2020

Dark Chocolate Terrine with Coffee and Cardamom

Undeniably rich, yet surprisingly light, our chilled chocolate terrine features a touch of cardamom evoking the fragrance and flavor of Turkish coffee. OR “Rich, yet feather light. Make-ahead easy, yet impossibly elegant.”

By Rose HattabaughNovember 8, 2022

Danish Dream Cake

This fluffy vanilla "dream cake" (drømmekage), gets its dreaminess from a light crumb and a gooey, glossy, caramelized coating.

Emergency Chocolate Cake

This ultra-easy chocolate cake, made without eggs, milk and butter, is also known as crazy cake because it doesn’t require ingredients standard to most cakes. It’s said to originate during the Great Depression when ingredients were scarce—hence anothe

By Rose HattabaughOctober 14, 2025

Cold-Oven Crème Brûlee

Made the classic way, yolk-rich crème brûlée is baked gently in a water bath. But we found we could skip the fuss of that by simply starting the custards in a cold oven. We pour the mixture into ramekins set on a wet towel in a baking dish to insulate

By Chris KimballJune 2, 2025

Rye Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rye flour—an addition we learned from Claire Ptak—makes for a far more complex, robustly flavored chocolate chip cookie.

Basque-Style Cheesecake

This world-famous Basque-style cheesecake, with its burnt, caramelized top, comes straight from the source.

By Rose HattabaughOctober 3, 2023

Romanian Crème Fraîche Cake (Lichiu)

During a trip to Transylvania, we tasted lichiu, a sweet yeasted dough spread with a creamy, lemony, semolina filling and a custard upper layer made with crème fraîche and egg yolks. The semolina and custard fuse during baking, resulting in a deliciou

By Hisham Ali HassanSeptember 5, 2024

Brazilian-Style Chocolate-Glazed Carrot Cake

In bolo de cenoura, the blender pulls out an amazing, orangey sweetness from carrots—totally unlike any American carrot cake.

By Rose HattabaughDecember 22, 2023

Hot Milk Sponge Cake

This old-fashioned recipe is everything you wish angel food cake would be—light, but tender and flavorful, rather than vanishing and cotton-candy sweet.

By Milk StreetOctober 28, 2022

Broken Phyllo Cake with Orange and Bay

The soaking syrup we use in this pudding-like citrus cake is infused with warm spices for added dimensions of flavor and fragrance.

By Rose HattabaughJanuary 5, 2022

Austrian Apple Strudel

In Austria, Eva-Maria Steinbichler and her daughter, Petra Steinbichler, showed us how to prepare a proper apple strudel. The result was a light, barely there pastry surrounding a buttery, sweet-tart filling. To build impressive gluten strength in the

Stovetop Chocolate Cake

This no-oven chocolate cake comes together in a pan—steamed, rather than baked, resulting in a moist, tender cake every time. OR This no-oven-needed chocolate cake is "steamed" for about 20 minutes in a Dutch oven—a method which results in an unimagin

By Yvonne RupertiJanuary 22, 2024

Tiramisù

In Treviso, where tiramisù was born, we were shown how to make the dessert by Linda Maria Botter of Camelia Bakery, whose tiramisù was voted best in the city. The lesson: Simplicity is best. Many recipes start with cooking a zabaglione, a yolk-rich cu

By Kevin ClarkFebruary 13, 2025

Brown Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies deliver big flavor because the key ingredients get special attention. We toast both the oats and pecans to coax out their nuttiness, then grind the oats in a food processor so the finished cookies have a more refined texture than your st

By Hisham Ali HassanAugust 12, 2024

Turkish Rice Pudding

A caramelized top adds depth to this subtly sweet version of rice pudding.

By Chris KimballJune 21, 2023

Japanese Cheesecake

This hybrid of sponge cake and classic cheesecake goes by multiple names, including Japanese cheesecake, cotton cheesecake and soufflé cheesecake. The understated, light yet rich confection is defined by a fluffy, airy texture—known as fuwa fuwa in Ja

By Dawn YanagiharaJuly 8, 2025

Italian Flourless Chocolate Torta

A deeply chocolatey flourless cake, devised from a century-and-a-half-old secret recipe from Vignola, Italy.

By Rose HattabaughJune 11, 2021

Invisible Apple Cake (Gâteau Invisible)

“Cake” is somewhat of a misnomer for this elegant dessert. Instead of open, airy and crumby, the texture is rich and dense, with slices of sweet-tart apples set in an egg-rich batter. During its long bake in the oven, the fruit slices and custard-like

By Hisham Ali HassanAugust 16, 2024

Yelapa-Style Sweet Corn Pie

Corn pie (pay de elote) celebrates the sweet, grassy, delicate flavors of fresh corn that pair beautifully with sugar, eggs, and dairy.

By Rose HattabaughJune 6, 2022

French Spice Bread (Pain d’épices)

Honey-based spice breads and cakes have been produced in one form or another throughout Europe since the Middle Ages. For good reason: The hygroscopic honey retains moisture, ensuring the breads remain moist during storage. Its antibacterial propertie

Yelapa-Style Chocolate Pie

This decadent, cocoa-rich pie comes from the beaches of Yelapa, where pies are eaten in hand, by the slice.

By Rose HattabaughFebruary 10, 2022

1-2-3-4 Yogurt Cake

In France, gâteau au yaourt is a cake that uses an entire container of yogurt then cleverly employs the empty container as the measuring cup for the flour, sugar and oil. It’s easy to throw together and a perfect recipe to make with children. If you’v

By Milk StreetOctober 5, 2023