Our 18 Best Italian Desserts

To guarantee homemade gelato's luscious consistency and purity of flavor, Jon Snyder suggests thickening gelato with cornstarch rather than eggs.

These delicate custards are a great way to showcase the subtle, nutty flavor of homemade nut milk.

Kevin Sbraga varies these wonderful nutty biscotti, sometimes dipping them in melted dark chocolate for an extra layer of flavor.

Pumpkin pie meets tiramisù, with layers of pumpkin-mascarpone custard and gingersnaps brushed with Calvados syrup. In the freezer, the flavors and textures meld to form a deliciously creamy dessert.

Here we serve the zabaglione hot when it's just made, but if you want to prepare the dish ahead of time, mix the zabaglione with whipped cream and refrigerate it as described in the first variation below.

Thick mascarpone cheese mixed with honey makes a luscious topping for poached cherries. You can serve the dessert either warm or cold. We love it both ways.

"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.

Kate Neumann reports that whenever she offers bomboloni (Italian donut holes) on the dessert menu at MK The Restaurant in Chicago, they inevitably sell out. She sometimes makes them at home, too: "They are easy to prepare in advance and then fry at the last moment," she explains, "and they are also quite easy to dress up." Neumann fills the donut holes with fruit jams or chocolate ganache, then rolls them in sugar and spices like anise and cardamom as soon as they come out of the frying pan.

"Grandmother's cake" is a traditional Tuscan dessert, though everyone's nonna makes it slightly differently. In his version, Joe Sponzo combines a delicate pastry crust with a silky pastry cream, which he flavors with vanilla and lemon zest (other Tuscan cooks add ricotta cheese). He tops the tart with pine nuts, another regional staple.

Karen DeMasco, who cowrote The Craft of Baking is known for recipes that are classically elegant yet approachable, like this supercreamy almond semifreddo ("half-frozen") topped with warm caramelized apples.

This icy dessert gets its sweet, tangy taste from Concord grape juice, which has three times the antioxidant power of orange and grapefruit juices.

This rustic dessert is from the Lombardy region of Northern Italy, where it's called sbrisolona. It's crumbly, buttery and nutty; Suzanne Goin thinks of it as a cross between biscotti and shortbread. She recommends dipping chunks of it into the Champagne-spiked sabayon, an airy dessert sauce made with whipped egg yolks.

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.

Meringata—Italian for "meringue cake"—is an elegant yet homey frozen dessert of whipped cream sandwiched between meringue rounds. Rolando Beramendi slices the meringata and serves it with a warm chocolate-espresso sauce.

The recipe for these crisp, deep-fried spiral sweets comes from Elena D'Orazio, Palma D'Orazio's cousin. In their native Puglia, cartellate are traditionally made at Christmas by bakers and home cooks alike. The cookies are usually drizzled with honey, but for parties D'Orazio simply sprinkles them with lemon zest and cinnamon sugar.

These crunchy-chewy cookies, sold at bakeries all over Lazio, are called brutti ma buoni in Italian, or "ugly but good." The name pretty much says it all. Antico Forno Molinari, in operation in the town of Frascati since the 1800s, makes this delicious and effortless four-ingredient version.

A classic Italian panzanella (bread salad) combines juicy tomatoes and bread cubes. Here, Chris Cosentino swaps in stone fruits like apricots and peaches for the tomatoes. Then he pushes the dessert over the top by dolloping the "salad" with an airy zabaglione, a frothy sauce of egg yolks whipped with sweet dessert wine.

Pastry chef Mathew Rice of Pastaria in Nashville takes the familiar elements of a classic tiramisu—ladyfingers, coffee, and mascarpone—and reimagines them as an icebox pie. The dessert is full of playful textures and flavors, including a dense coffee mousse and salty-sweet coffee crunchies.