Sweet and Salty Desserts

Hit all your tastebuds with these incredible sweet and salty desserts, from chocolate chip cookies with red miso buttercream to salted caramel pie to bacon-bourbon brownies.

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Milk-Chocolate Tart with Pretzel Crust

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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.

Chocolate Recipes

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Salted-Caramel Squares

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Here, tender caramel tops a dense, buttery crust in Zoe Nathan's delicious salty-sweet treats.

Dessert Bars

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Chocolate-Chip Cookies with Red Miso Buttercream

Chef Erik Bruner-Yang adds umami to the classic sugar-salt combination by spreading these crisp-chewy chocolate-chip cookies with a rich, sweet-savory miso buttercream that’s flecked with minced lemon verbena.

Chocolate-Chip Cookie Recipes

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Ice Cream Bonbons

Tina Rupp

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Kendra Baker uses caramel ice cream in her bonbons, which have a silky chocolate shell and flaky sea salt on top.

The Best Homemade Ice Cream Recipes

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Salted Caramel Pie

Dana Gallagher

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This supereasy pie is a caramel lovers' dream. The filling is sweetened condensed milk sprinkled lightly with sea salt and baked until thick and gooey, then chilled in a simple graham cracker crust.

How to Make a Pie Crust

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Salted Fudge Brownies

Tina Rupp

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Kate Krader has been making these fudgy, sweet-salty brownies since she was 10 years old. As a kid she used regular table salt; now she recommends a flaky sea salt like Maldon, because the flavor is less harsh and it melts so nicely into the batter, accentuating the chocolaty sweetness.

All-American Recipes

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Vanilla Bean Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce

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"I tried making this as an upside-down cake, which was a disaster, but then I realized I could just pour the caramel on top," Valerie Gordon says.

Dessert Recipes

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Salted Shortbread Cookies

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Holiday Cookie Guide

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Bacon-Bourbon Brownies with Pecans

FREDRIKA STJÄRNE

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Kat Kinsman tops her rich brownies with bacon and pecans. To enhance the smoky flavor, she mixes some of the bacon fat into the batter.

Sweet and Savory Bacon Recipes

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Chocolate Pots de Crème with Maple Caramel and Salt

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Pastry chef Michael Laiskonis serves this milk-chocolaty dessert in an eggshell with caramel foam; it's known as "the egg." It's just as good in ramekins, topped with a simple caramel sauce blended with maple syrup.

Easter Recipes

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Chocolate Wafers with Ginger, Fennel and Sea Salt

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Dark chocolate with a high cacao content is lower in sugar and higher in antioxidants than milk chocolate. For this ingenious snack, Grace Parisi coats wafer-thin crispbreads in dark chocolate so that they seem like candy bars studded with flaky Maldon sea salt, chewy crystallized ginger and candied fennel seeds.

Snack Bars

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Cranberry-Pecan Bread Pudding with Bacon

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A good loaf of cranberry-nut bread from a bakery has so much flavor that there's no need to trick it up with lots of ingredients. As the pudding bakes, the bread becomes almost custardlike, with a crispy brown top.

Ultimate Thanksgiving Recipes

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Dulce de Leche, Coconut and Chocolate Chip Magic Bars

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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.

Recipes from the Best Bake Sale Cookbook

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Butterscotch Pots de Crème with Caramel Sauce

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"I have a lot of guys from Oaxaca in my kitchen, and they put salt on everything," says Travis Lett. "When I saw one of them add salt to this dessert, I thought, Hey, that's a great idea."

Dessert Recipes

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Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel Filling

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More decadent than molten chocolate cake: one filled with warm caramel, reveals F&W's Grace Parisi.

Chocolate Recipes

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Chocolate-Cayenne Cocktail Cookies

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Dorie Greenspan loves using Valrhona cocoa to make these spicy, unexpectedly tender cookies, flecked with flaky Maldon salt. "It's so rich and dark," she says.

Chocolate Cookie Recipes

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Chocolate-Almond Saltine Toffee

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Pastry chef Nicole Plue was intrigued by a recipe she discovered for matzo covered in toffee and chocolate. But she knew she could improve it by using crackers instead of matzo for a hit of salt. Now the saltines, slathered with buttery toffee and bittersweet chocolate, are a favorite on her petit four tray.

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Sweet and Salty Desserts

1 of 17

Milk-Chocolate Tart with Pretzel Crust

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Salted-Caramel Squares

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Chocolate-Chip Cookies with Red Miso Buttercream

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Ice Cream Bonbons

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Salted Caramel Pie

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Salted Fudge Brownies

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Vanilla Bean Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce

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Salted Shortbread Cookies

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Bacon-Bourbon Brownies with Pecans

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Chocolate Pots de Crème with Maple Caramel and Salt

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Chocolate Wafers with Ginger, Fennel and Sea Salt

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Cranberry-Pecan Bread Pudding with Bacon

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Dulce de Leche, Coconut and Chocolate Chip Magic Bars

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Butterscotch Pots de Crème with Caramel Sauce

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Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel Filling

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Chocolate-Cayenne Cocktail Cookies

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Chocolate-Almond Saltine Toffee

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