Our 32 Best Thanksgiving Desserts

Give your favorite side dish the dessert table treatment. Cranberry sauce fans will love this jammy fruit pie with the addition of warm holiday spices and a buttery crumble topping.

At Sofra Bakery & Cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maura Kilpatrick is known for her ingenious blending of American and Middle Eastern flavors. Here she balances sweet Medjool dates with bitter espresso and toasty brown butter for a pie that might look familiar but is surprisingly complex.

These supermoist, gluten-free cupcakes have terrific pumpkin flavor and an irresistible topping of fluffy, creamy frosting and golden caramel sauce.

Chef Michael Tusk uses fresh quinces from California to make this twist on the classic French upside-down apple tart. Quince is more dense than apple, so it retains a bit of firmness even after it's cooked.

Silky chocolate panna cotta brings the richness of cold-weather favorite hot cocoa while the caramelized and spiced pumpkin seed brittle ties this decadent dish in with the fall harvest.

Instead of a slice of cheese on top, this apple pie puts cheddar in the crust to provide a bit of tanginess that's balanced out by the addition of nutty rye flour.

"We get these crazy organic pears that are ugly as sin," says Tory Miller of the Moon-glow variety he uses throughout the cold winter months. Peeling them, though, reveals a fruit so beautiful and juicy that he prefers a minimalist approach, either serving them raw or poaching them in wine, such as the Riesling he uses here.

Shawn McClain tops his cinnamon-and-vanilla-flavored panna cotta with an elegant apple-cider gelée. He equates the dessert to a Creamsicle because it successfully combines creamy and tangy flavors.

Give the holiday staple pecan pie a boost with both chocolate and a bit of bourbon in this perfect combination of cocoa, caramel, and crunchy, buttery pecans.

A beautiful alternative to the classic Thanksgiving pie, this sweet and tangy bar has a simple press-in crust and a lemon curd filling swirled with cranberry puree.

This genius bread pudding is made with melted vanilla ice cream, eliminating the need to make a custard.

Few desserts are easier to prepare than a trayful of cookies, but this chocolatey and salty crowd pleaser makes things even simpler by letting you skip rolling or scooping with just one big cookie you can slice and serve like a pie.

Thanksgiving Make-Ahead Tip: The baked cheesecake can be refrigerated in the springform pan for up to 4 days.

Greg Patent likes to use an assortment of tart and sweet apples in this dense, apple-packed pie. Some varieties to look for are Greening, Cortland, Winesap, Braeburn, Jonamac and Granny Smith.

If figs are a holiday favorite in your house, this cake can really pack them in, accommodating as much as 12 ounces of fresh fruit alongside plenty of rich, bittersweet chocolate.

To make chopping macadamia nuts easy, Greg Patent suggests, put them in a resealable plastic bag and breaking them up with a rolling pin.

Three Babes Bakeshop in San Francisco offers this fun, portable pie: They bake the pastry in a jar, then fill it with fig-and-pear syrup, mascarpone cream, fruit and toasted walnuts.

Cookies may get all the attention around Christmas, but you can turn classic chocolate chip cookies into a Thanksgiving-appropriate dessert with the addition of dried cranberries.

This tart features silky-smooth, rich custard and caramelized apples in a tender, earthy rye-flour pastry crust.

These decadent chocolate-crusted bars are topped with a homemade caramel that sinks into the pumpkin cheesecake batter during baking.

This moist cake is served with butterscotch sauce, caramelized apples and ice cream.

This reimagined pumpkin pie from Mr. Holmes Bakehouse in San Francisco has an ethereal pumpkin-and-white-chocolate-mousse filling and a stellar, crunchy crust.

Get all the flavors of apple pie in an innovative, fun-to-eat ice cream sandwich, made with apple pie-spiced vanilla ice cream and snickerdoodle cookies.

Add some color to your Thanksgiving dessert table by swapping regular sweet potato pie with this gorgeous purple one.

Ditch the pumpkin pie and try out this moist, creamy pumpkin layer cake, which swaps plain old vanilla buttercream for a mascarpone frosting.

For a wonderful contrast to the sweetness of her pecan pie, master baker Alice Medrich adds minced candied ginger and a splash of rum to the filling.

Grace Parisi uses a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady, and Golden Delicious apples for this iconic dessert.

This take on pumpkin pie has the smooth texture of the classic, but with extra layers of ginger-caramel flavor. Candied pepitas on top add extra crunch.

To create a crisp crust on the bottom, Grace Parisi partially bakes the pie shell before adding the filling. If the edge starts to darken too much, cover it with a pie shield or strips of foil.

Since it's technically a custard, a smooth and creamy consistency is the goal, and processing the pumpkin helps break up any fibers for a smoother filling. The addition of browned butter gives the pumpkin a subtle butterscotch flavor.

Instead of making a traditional two-crust pie in a pie plate, Food & Wine's Justin Chapple makes this free-form, fruit-filled, ginger-laced pie on a baking sheet.