Our 29 Best Chocolate Dessert Recipes

Chocolate French Crullers with Dried Raspberries and Fudge Glaze

Made with a classic choux dough, her French crullers are likewise full of personality, featuring a crunchy crust, an airy center, and a colorful topping of dried raspberries and fudge.

Air Fryer Brownies

With the help of an air fryer, these gooey, fudgy brownies—baked in ramekins and reminiscent of a molten chocolate cake—are less than an hour away.

Double-Chocolate Rye Cookies

A mix of unsweetened cocoa and bittersweet chocolate bars gives these fudgy cookies a deep chocolate flavor. Dark rye flour adds a lightly savory note that balances the sweet intensity of dark chocolate well and plays off the crunchy sea salt garnish. The addition of light brown sugar makes these cookies extra chewy and helps to extend their shelf life.

• Brownie Cookies

Chocolate-Buttermilk Snack Cakes

In her update of the classic chocolate Hostess cupcake, Chicago pastry chef Mindy Segal uses mascarpone in the rich and creamy filling.

Mom's Chocolate Cake

This is a real old-fashioned American chocolate layer cake. It's very moist, very chocolatey, a snap to make and best baked the day before serving. Marcia Kiesel acquired the recipe from her friend Joyce Cole, who got it from her mother.

Chocolate-Cookie Crunch Trifle

Any kind of cookie works as a layer in this decadent and super-chocolaty trifle from Washington, DC, pastry chef Tiffany MacIsaac.

Bittersweet-Chocolate Tart

This outrageously elegant tart is from Alain Ducasse's Manhattan restaurant Benoit.

Chocolate Panna Cotta with Spiced Pepita Brittle

This light, silky panna cotta tastes a lot like hot cocoa in custard form. The brittle is easy to make; heat sugar and water on the stove, swirl in butter and spiced pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), then let cool.

Chocolate and Fig Cake

You've got options: The large range of figs called for in this cake recipe leaves the decoration and texture of this dense and fudgy chocolate dessert up to you. Four ounces of figs creates two small rings around the cake, while the full 12 ounces of fruit will cover the entire top with a jammy layer.

• More Chocolate Cakes

Chocolate Cardamom Cream Tart with Pistachio-Sesame Brittle

This recipe adds creaminess from milk chocolate and plenty of richness from heavy cream. A touch of cardamom in the custard and the whipped-cream topping, plus the contrasting crunch of homemade nut brittle, elevate this dessert.

Spiced Chocolate Fondue

Caroline Yeh sells extraordinary candies from small European and American producers. She's also an excellent home cook and baker with a passion for chocolate. Fragrant with cinnamon, clove, cardamom and ginger, her fondue holds up remarkably well at room temperature, which makes it good for parties—especially when it's served with gingerbread, apples or shortbread for dunking.

Chocolate Party Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache and Homemade Sprinkles

Rich, chocolaty, and so very festive, this chocolate cake with ganache frosting is worthy of a party on its own. Ganache has many applications in pastry, and here Chef Paola Velez uses it to make the silky-smooth frosting to top her chocolate cake.

Chocolate-Peppermint Brownies

These rich peppermint brownies topped with crushed candy canes are from London's renowned bakery Violet. No candy canes? Use striped peppermint candies.

Crunchy Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Layer Cake

The genius of this layer cake is its extraordinarily crunchy filling, made with almonds, salted peanuts, creamy peanut butter, chocolate and Rice Krispies. The silky milk-chocolate ganache frosting almost pushes the recipe over the top.

Dark-Chocolate Bark with Walnuts and Dried Cherries

Not only is dark chocolate full of antioxidants, it is mood enhancing in its own right. This recipe gets an extra boost from walnuts (an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids) and dried cherries (high in fiber and minerals).

Warm Chocolate Cakes with Mascarpone Cream

In his riff on Black Forest cake, a favorite dessert of his father's, Hosea Rosenberg tops individual cakes with mascarpone cream instead of whipped cream and luscious brandied cherries instead of jarred.

Gianduja Mousse

As if the chocolate-hazelnut spread gianduja isn't delicious enough straight off the spoon, Grace Parisi has folded in whipped cream and crème fraîche to create a truly decadent (and ridiculously easy) mousse. For a supereasy ice cream sandwich, spoon the mousse between chocolate wafers and freeze overnight.

Black Cherry–Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches

Homemade chocolate cookies encase store-bought black cherry ice cream for the ultimate ice cream sandwiches.

Miso Chocolate Tart with Black Sesame–Chocolate Graham Cracker Crust

This dessert is savory-sweet. The nutty, crunchy crust lays the foundation for a velvety-smooth filling and the addition of miso mixed with melted dark chocolate adds depth and umami, an almost buttery quality, and saltiness to balance the sweetness in the truffle-like ganache.

Peanut Butter–Chocolate Pie

With the smooth, nutty peanut butter filling, glistening ganache, and salty roasted peanuts on top, this pie evokes all the sweetness of a childhood memory, delivered in the form of an elegant, nuanced dessert that adults will want to savor.

Bûche de Noël with Mascarpone Cream and Dark Chocolate Ganache

Butter and corn syrup in the ganache keep it smooth and glossy. Stirring slivered toasted almonds into the ganache frosting gives it a "tree bark" look and adds contrasting texture to the silky filling and tender cake.

Milk Chocolate–Peanut Custards

These clusters are built with low-fat chocolate milk and silken tofu for texture. Roasted peanuts add terrific flavor and a little crunch.

Black and Ruby Cookies

Paola Velez adds her own spin to the iconic New York City treat of her youth: the Black and White cookie. She starts by going all-chocolate with the topping: one side gets piped with dark chocolate ganache and the other with ruby chocolate, a fruity chocolate with a pink hue.

Chocolate-and-Citrus Cassata

This spectacular holiday dessert comes from chef Rebecca Wilcomb's New Orleans restaurant Gianna. To decorate it, use an offset spatula, a bench scraper, and a cake turntable for the smoothest cake with straight sides. Prevent air bubbles from forming in the dark chocolate ganache glaze by using a spatula to stir the melting chocolate.

Lee Lee's Double Chocolate Chunk Brownies

Pastry chef Lee Lee Reid is a self-proclaimed brownie aficionado. "I'm always looking for that perfect chew," she says. Needless to say, the chocolate chunk brownie recipe she developed, which customers can find at her husband's bakeshop, Nathaniel Reid Bakery in St. Louis, is the ideal balance of cakey and fudgy—falling in line with Nathaniel's own baking philosophy.

Giant Chocolate Cookie with Cacao Nibs and Flaky Salt

The only thing better than a dark cocoa cookie with a hint of chewiness and a generous sprinkle of flaky salt is this impressively oversized one that's designed to feed a crowd. Cut into wedges, the cookies resemble chocolate shortbread, but these treats — studded with chopped bittersweet chocolate and cacao nibs — are far more indulgent.

Cocoa Cola Bundt Cake

In her modern-day version of the Coca-Cola cake, cookbook author Vallery Lomas flips tradition on its head by making a cola-flavored cake with cola-flavored icing.

Salted Tahini Chocolate Shortbread

These buttery, nutty, salty shortbread cookies have enough structure to hold together when you pick them up, but when you take a bite, they are meltingly tender.

Chocolate Puddings with Miso Caramel

Miso-enriched caramel intensifies the deep, chocolaty flavor of these silky puddings from pastry chef Clarice Lam. A touch of cornstarch in the custard base helps thicken the puddings and keeps them from curdling or breaking. Be sure to bring the leftover caramel to the table; its savory, bitter, and sweet flavor will have guests reaching for more.