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Desserts for a Crowd
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Desserts for a Crowd

Serve up these sweet treats for your next party.

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1 of 21 © SARAH BOLLA

S'mores Brownies

These fudgy, gluten-free brownies are baked in a graham cracker crust, then topped with marshmallows and broiled.

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2 of 21 © Phoebe Lapine

Gluten-Free Lemon Drizzle Cake

This classic British loaf cake is incredibly moist because it's made with olive oil instead of butter, which also gives the batter a rich golden color. The addition of poppy seeds makes it a perfect alternative to your morning muffin, while the lemon drizzle dresses up the cake for company.

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3 of 21 © Fredrika Stjärne

Dulce de Leche, Coconut and Chocolate Chip Magic Bars

This is Grace Parisi's sophisticated version of magic bars, that chocolate-coconut bake-sale favorite. Browning the butter gives the crust a nutty flavor; cooking it in a metal baking dish makes it extra crisp. In a touch inspired by pastry chefs' favorite new ingredient, Grace adds bacon to the filling.

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4 of 21 © CON POULOS

Milk-Chocolate Tart with Pretzel Crust

This dessert from pastry chef Colleen Grapes, a tribute to the chocolate-covered pretzel, hits just the right salty-sweet note. Grapes mixes crushed pretzels with flour, butter, sugar and egg to make a crunchy crust, pours in a luxurious milk-chocolate filling, then sprinkles on more crushed pretzels as a garnish.

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5 of 21 © JOHNNY MILLER

Triple-Cheese Cheesecake with Amaretti Crust

This killer cheesecake has an ethereally light, creamy texture and fantastic crunchy crust made from honey graham crackers and amaretti cookies.

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6 of 21 © LUCY SCHAEFFER

Salted-Caramel Squares

Zoe Nathan has the zany, freewheeling air of a person on a permanent sugar high. "It's a huge pastry playground," she boasts of her bakery. Her salted-caramel squares are just as bold, with tender caramel atop a dense, buttery crust. "I've always loved salt and sugar," she says. "As a kid, I'd dip my fries in milk shakes."

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7 of 21 © JOHN KERNICK

Key Lime Pie with Chocolate-Almond Crust

“I’ve learned how to bake without proper tools but nothing replaces the Microplane for doing things like grating lime zest,” says teen blogger and dessert aficionado, Elissa Bernstein.

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8 of 21 © KAMRAN SIDDIQI

Gingerbread Pear Loaf Cake

This super moist loaf spiked with candied ginger is the perfect tea cake.

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9 of 21 © CON POULOS

Porter Bundt Cake with Whiskey-Caramel Sauce

This richly flavored cake features quintessential Irish ingredients such as dark porter beer, dark brown sugar and whiskey.

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10 of 21  © CON POULOS

Chocolate-Chip-Pecan Cookie Bars

Feel free to swap walnuts or almonds for the pecans, or use half nuts and half dried cranberries for tart, chewy bars.

 

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11 of 21 © ANNA WILLIAMS

Strawberry Shortcake with Star Anise Sauce

Sherry Yard, the pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills, California, loved strawberry shortcake as a kid, even though her mother made it with "plain old pound cake," she says. Since then, Yard has improved the recipe with a (formerly) secret trio of ingredients—high-quality white chocolate in the batter, crème fraîche and heavy cream in the icing—which make this all-American dessert especially rich and moist.

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12 of 21 © CON POULOS

Icebox Chocolate Cheesecake

Grace Parisi brilliantly layers chocolate cookies with a quick mix of cream cheese, chocolate syrup and a little water. The cookies soften as the cake chills overnight for a perfectly moist, chocolaty “cheater’s” cheesecake.

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13 of 21 © FREDRIKA STJÄRNE

Maple-Bourbon Banana Pudding Cake

While this delicious, simple cake bakes, a sweet, rich sauce forms in the bottom of the dish.

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14 of 21 © Thomas Heinser

Lemon Upside-Down Cake

Cal Peternell likes teaching recipes that are extremely versatile, like this one. The cake is wonderful when it's made with almost any type of fruit, from figs and blood oranges to pineapple. Peternell usually uses sweet Meyer lemons from his neighbor's tree. Regular lemons are tasty too and add a bitter note that's a lovely contrast to the gooey brown-sugar topping.

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15 of 21

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16 of 21 © JOHN KERNICK

White Peach Tart

"This crust is not what you'd expect," Marco Canora says. "Instead of being crunchy, it's puffy and cakey." The dough is terrific for impromptu baking, because it doesn't need to be chilled before it's rolled out. For the filling, Canora recommends using peaches that are ripe but still firm, as drippy fruit will make the soft crust soggy.

 

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17 of 21 © CON POULOS

German Chocolate Cake

Sam German created the mild, dark baking chocolate called Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate in 1852; in the late 1950s, a Dallas newspaper published a recipe for German's Chocolate Cake. The dessert took the South by storm and has been a staple ever since.

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18 of 21 © CON POULOS

Black Mission Fig Clafoutis

Matthew Accarrino cleverly adds juicy fresh figs to this delicious pancake-like French dessert, then tops it with port-infused whipped cream.

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19 of 21 © QUENTIN BACON

Chocolate-Mint Thumbprints

Thumbprint cookies—made by pressing a small round of dough with the thumb to form an indentation—are great for filling with chocolate or jam. These thumbprints have a creamy, minty white-chocolate filling. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito often mix chopped Andes mint candies into the batter, but any kind of mint-flavored chocolate works well.

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20 of 21 © Con Poulos

Ganache-Stuffed Chocolate-Chip Cookies

A stuffed cookie is like a sandwich cookie, only with more cream on the inside—it's fatter, fuller and (if you're the kind of person who twists apart the cookies to get to the cream) better. Jessica Sullivan, the pastry chef at Boulevard restaurant in San Francisco, makes hers with nutty chocolate-chip cookies and silky chocolate ganache.

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21 of 21 © CON POULOS

Matcha Tea Cake Cookies

These delicate cookies are made with oil, so they’re moist and tender. Matcha gives them a light, toasty flavor and turns them a pretty green.

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