21 Quick and Easy Apple Desserts

Apple-Pomegranate Cobbler

This juicy and bright apple cobbler is just the right amount of sweet, with an irresistibly tender and crunchy crust on top.

Tarte Tatin

Golden Delicious apples are perfect in this classic version of tarte tatin from chef Jonathan Waxman because they get perfectly tender while they bake but never lose their shape.

Maple-Apple Upside-Down Cake

This is one of the best upside-down cakes ever — the maple syrup infuses both the apples and the cake, making the dessert taste like a stack of apple pancakes.

• Cooking with Maple Syrup

Country Apple Galette

Chef Jacques Pépin loves to serve this delicate apple tart as a buffet dessert, since it's beautiful, easy to slice, and simple to eat, pizza-style, while standing. The miraculously easy and versatile pastry dough comes together in a food processor in less than 20 seconds and can be filled with all sorts of fruits or vegetables. Because the tart is free-form, the pastry can be rolled into either a round or a rectangle.

Apple Pie Bars

These bars have a nutty, streusel-like topping and a crisp shortbread crust. It's America's iconic dessert, transformed into an indulgent snack.

Double-Crust Apple Pie

F&W's former senior test kitchen editor Grace Parisi uses a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady, and Golden Delicious apples for this iconic dessert.

• More Pies and Tarts

Apple Bread Pudding

Chef Gail Simmons to the rescue! How does she transform a lackluster Top Chef Season 3 bread pudding into a standout dessert? By sautéing apples in brandy and butter and soaking them alongside brioche in lots of vanilla custard before baking.

• Gail Simmons Rescues Top Chef Dishes

Apple Tart with Almond Cream

In this delicious dessert, the thin, crisp pastry shell is filled with a layer of almond cream made from both finely ground and coarsely chopped nuts that give the tart layers of texture. The thinly sliced apples on top caramelize as the tart bakes.

• Beautiful Desserts

Apple Cake with Toffee Crust

When pastry chef Lara Atkins was little, her mother made this cake for her bridge club; Atkins remembers how she and her brothers would have to wait (and wait and wait) for their slices until all the ladies of the club had served themselves. Atkins now makes the cake for her son, who never has to wait for his piece.

• Wonderful Cakes

Spiced Upside-Down Apple Bundt Cake

David Guas, co-author of the cookbook DamGoodSweet, tops his apple bundt cake with a nicely salty streusel of pecans and toasted rolled oats. He bakes the streusel on its own to make it extraordinarily crisp, then pats it over the warm cake right out of the oven.

Apple Pie Granita

Natural-style apple juice—less filtered than regular—is high in vitamin C and antioxidants. Here, Emeril Lagasse transforms it into a refreshing granita.

• More Granitas

Granny Smith Apple and Brown Butter Custard Tart

Pastry chef Kate Neumann often showcases rich, nutty, fragrant browned butter in her desserts. Here, she adds it to a sweet custard loaded with caramelized apples and baked in a buttery tart shell.

Apple Crisp with Dried Cranberries

For this dessert, chef Lee Woolver recommends a tart apple, like the Northern Spy variety that grows all over upstate New York. To make the recipe more decadent, he often adds chocolate chips.

• Fruit Cobblers and Crisps

Apple Pandowdy

Pie for a crowd, this pandowdy uses a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady and Golden Delicious apples for the perfect fall dessert.

• More Fruit Desserts

Caramelized Apple Clafoutis

This lightly sweet pastry, studded with caramelized apple, is one component of an elaborate dish entitled Brillat-Savarin. Its major ingredients — apples, créme fraîche, Calvados, and the Brillat-Savarin cheese — all come from Normandy, France.

• More Make-Ahead Desserts

Apple Cider Cream Pie

In 2009, chef Allison Kave and her boyfriend, Jay Horton, won Brooklyn's Pie Bake-Off with this clever pie. The challenge was to use a local ingredient, so they chose apple cider and developed this delicious combination of cream pie and apple pie.

• More Pies and Tarts

Apple Sharlotka

Chef Matt Danko uses his father's recipe to make sharlotka, a deliciously light and fluffy Russian apple cake.

• More Apple Recipes

Apple and Olive Oil Bundt Cake

At Coyle's Bakeshop in Seattle, chef-owner Rachael Coyle always keeps a bundt cake or two in the case. This autumnal version, an adaptation of an Italian apple cake, is moist and light, fragrant with freshly ground spices and studded with chunks of fruit. In the spring, substitute fresh rhubarb for the apples.

Apple Pie à la Mode Ice Cream Sandwiches

Top Chef winner Kristen Kish designed this dessert to honor both of her grandmothers, one known for her apple pie and the other for her snickerdoodles. Kish folds spiced apple pie filling into vanilla ice cream, then sandwiches it between chewy snickerdoodle cookies.

Apple Tart with Apricot Glaze

Frank Stitt, owner of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Alabama, started his culinary education by working for the late great cookbook author Richard Olney in Provence, France. This tart is the final dish in a dinner party menu designed by Stitt and inspired by Olney's love of seasonal produce and great wine.

Deep-Dish All-American Cinnamon Apple Pie

This pie — one of our 40 best recipes — gets its intensely apple-y flavor from macerating the apples in sugar for an hour. The liquid drained from the apples is simmered with a hit of butter until a syrup forms. That rich syrup is mixed with the apples, piled into the crust, and baked until tender and delicious. The pie is excellent the day it's made, but even better the next day.