50+ Delicious Desserts to Celebrate Easter With

updated Feb 27, 2023

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lemon coconut cake on a cake stand with a slice missing — Credit: Photo: Ghazalle Badiozamani; Food Styling: Amelia Rampe
Lemon-Coconut Cake

If you’re starting to plan your Easter menu, we’ve got you covered: Here’s a simple traditional Easter dinner or an early Easter Sunday brunch menu to get you started. If you’ve already got dinner (or brunch) worked out, then you just need a dessert or two for the Easter table — they’ll add to the decor just as much as dyed eggs will.

Easter desserts are some of the best. Seasonally, you get to combine the last citrus fruits of winter and the first fresh berries of spring. Plus the kitchen itself is often cool enough to bake a cake, some shortcakes, or angel food cake with dollops of whipped cream without causing everyone to burst into sweat. The only thing you need to decide is how much time you want to invest. Traditional Easter desserts — think carrot cake and hot crossed buns — take a little more time. No bake treats like trifles and panna cotta, however, are just as simple and satisfying as classic meringues. You could even try your hand at homemade peeps, if you’re feeling ambitious!

Whether you’re hosting Easter brunch or just looking for something to bring to an Easter lunch potluck, here are over 50 recipes to choose from — all of them delicious.

Classic Easter Desserts

Sweet spring carrots and the first berries of spring should make an appearance at your Easter table along side hot cross buns and coconut cakes that are perfectly timed for spring.

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Easter Egg Blondies

Not only do these one-bowl blondies bake up to be chewy, fudgy, and rich with butterscotch flavor, but they are studded with pieces of pastel-colored milk chocolate Cadbury Mini Eggs.

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Classic Easter Cake with Coconut and Jelly Beans

This cake is nothing short of pure American ingenuity, in our minds — a sweet and sticky confection of angel food cake, marshmallow icing, and all the jelly beans you can handle.

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Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Carrot cake has a charming earthiness to it. The warmth of cinnamon, the vegetal sweetness of carrots, and the pop of raisins — all come together to make a dessert easily enjoyed on many occasions.

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The Best Classic Coconut Cake

Make this classic, fluffy coconut cake at home with a few supermarket shortcuts and without the fuss of your usual coconut cake.

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Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry shortcake delights us all with its bejeweled, sparkly appearance on the picnic table. Here’s the classiest recipe we know for real, honest-to-goodness shortcake, which is just essential to making this dessert properly.

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Classic Hot Cross Buns for Your Easter Table

Classic hot cross buns hold genuine symbolic value that can stand deliciously and proudly alongside any holiday baked treat.

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Pignoli Cookies

These classic Italian cookies — made with almond paste, sugar, egg whites, and pine nuts — are wonderfully light and nutty. It just so happens that they are naturally gluten-free.

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Classic Hummingbird Cake

This Southern classic doesn't even require a mixer! It does, however, require perfect cream cheese frosting.

Chocolate Desserts

Chocolate is a little less obvious choice for the Easter table but just as festive.

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A bowl of chocolate mousse is a decadent treat, but a double-layered chocolate mousse cake with a cookie crust is next level.

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Flourless Chocolate Almond Layer Cake

This cake has magical synergy. With no flour at all, this delicate and tender almond cake is based on the taste of ancient recipes, yet it’s made with modern cake-baking techniques.

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Flourless Chocolate Cake

A truly flourless chocolate cake that manages to be light and rich at the same time. It's genuinely gluten-free, fabulously foolproof, and all chocolate.

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Chocolate Coconut Cake

Chocolate lovers and those with dietary restrictions, unite — this cake is eggless and can be dairy-free.

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Chocolate Angel Food Dream Cake

This vintage chocolate cake is light, airy, and filled and frosted with whipped cream.

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Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

This ultra-moist chocolate cake is deep and rich in flavor and best served with whipped cream and toasted hazelnuts.

Carrot Desserts

Carrot cake isn’t the only way to serve this sweet spring vegetable, but it’s a very good option.

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Carrot Cake Cookies

Tender, warmly spiced carrot cake cookies with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting on top.

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Big Mary's Carrot Cake

This moist, tender carrot cake gets its texture and flavor not from carrots but from jars of carrot baby food. No carrot-grating required!

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Easy Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

One-bowl carrot Carrot cake cupcakes are the tastiest way to incorporate a dose of veggies into a sweet treat. These cupcakes are as easy as can be, requiring just one bowl and a whisk to make the batter. with an easy cream cheese frosting.

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My Great Granny Jestine’s Carrot

A carrot loaf bread inspired my great granny’s handwritten recipe.

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Upside-Down Carrot Cake

There is nothing like the pleasure of making and eating a simple upside-down cake. Although it may look complicated, it’s one of the easiest cakes to make.

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Vegan Carrot Cake

You won't miss the dairy products in this spice-packed and fully plant-based cake.

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Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This simple carrot cake with its tender cinnamon-scented crumb and thick layer of cream cheese frosting is the perfect end to your Easter meal this year.

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Italian Carrot Cake (Torta di Carote)

The couple behind the Tuscan Gun share their family recipe for a just-sweet-enough carrot cake that's free of whole nuts, spices, and raisins.

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Domenica Marchetti's Carrot Polenta Cake with Marsala

This cake is simple and rustic, like many Italian desserts, and it's built around carrots and olive oil — not butter — so it’s easy to throw together (certainly no mixer required).

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Carrot halwa is an Indian dessert made with grated carrots, whole milk, dried fruit, and nuts, and it has a delicious light fudgy texture.

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Yossy Arefi's Best Carrot Cake

This impossibly easy carrot cake only takes one hour to whip up.

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Carrot Cake Muffins

Turn your favorite Easter party cake into a morning muffin you can eat all throughout spring.

Lemon Desserts

Lemon meringue pie is a favorite spring dessert because it brings together winter citrus and spring eggs in a symphony of flavors, but just about any lemon dessert will delight.

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Say hello to spring with these lemony cupcakes that taste like pure sunshine. The tender moist-crumbed lemon cupcakes are topped with a buttercream frosting and for extra dazzle, you can sprinkle on yellow or gold sparkling sugar.

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Triple Lemon Cake

Inspired by Malinda Russell's cream cake, this triple lemon cake has a delicate crumb and is bursting with flavor.

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Lemon-Coconut Cake

Luscious bright lemon and creamy coconut are perfectly paired in this decadent layer cake.

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Lemon Swirl Cheesecake Bars

A buttery graham cracker crust joins forces with a lemon curd-swirled cheesecake layer in this sweet and tangy spring treat.

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Lemon Blueberry Bread

This tall loaf is full of plump blueberries and lemon zest, and crowned with lemon icing.

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Easy Lemon Bundt Cake with Fresh Lemon Glaze

Not only is it fast, fancy, and packed with sweet citrus tang, but this is the easiest, most foolproof lemon bundt cake you'll ever make.

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Easy Lemon Cake with Whipped Raspberry Frosting

This cake fits the bill for the most special occasions, yet is easy enough to make any day of the week just because.

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Lemon-Yogurt Icebox Tart

It’s spring, the sun is shining, and that feels like reason enough to celebrate. It’s just the right time to serve this bright, zingy lemon tart, a simple, no-bake dessert that combines Greek yogurt and bottled lemon curd in a tender pastry crust.

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Easy Lemon Drizzle Cake

An easy, tender cake filled with lemon zest and crowned with a tangy lemon glaze.

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Flourless Lemon Almond Cake

This lemon almond cake is lightly sweetened and full of bright lemon flavor. Serve the cake simply with a dusting of powdered sugar, or add sliced strawberries or other fresh berries, which pair beautifully with the cake’s lemony notes.

Easter Cheesecakes

Cheesecake is beloved for its creamy texture and stunning presentation but it is best made in advance — perfect for a busy host.

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Lemon Meringue Cheesecake

If you’re searching for a unique, showstopping holiday dessert that will delight everyone in your household, look no further than this lemon meringue cheesecake.

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Easy Mini Cheesecakes

These mini cheesecakes are ridiculously creamy, and feature that buttery graham cracker crust everyone agrees on. They’re equal parts celebratory and homey, which is really the best kind of dessert.

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The Perfect Cheesecake

Cheesecake should never be a source of anything except pure bliss. Not distress. Not frustration. Certainly never tears. Just dreamy, decadent, nonstop bliss. Here's a step-by-step recipe for creamy, no-fail cheesecake.

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The Easiest Instant Pot Cheesecake

Our take on this cult-favorite dessert recipe has the fewest ingredients possible for the easiest Instant Pot cheesecake of all.

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Easy No-Bake Cheesecake

This no-bake cheesecake is impossibly smooth without a hint of graininess, perfectly creamy and tangy, and complete with a buttery graham cracker crust.

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Goat Cheese, Honey & Pistachio Mini Cheesecakes with Meyer Lemon Cream

These individual goat cheese and honey cheesecakes with Meyer lemon cream are a delicious way to prove your culinary skills.

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Vegan Berry Cheesecake

This no-bake vegan cheesecake tastes so creamy and delicious that you can’t even tell it’s plant-based.

No-Bake Desserts

These last minute desserts don’t require the oven, which is great if you’ve got a ham or lamb roast going in it already!

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Fancy No-Bake Chocolate Caramel Tart

It couldn't be easier to make this chocolate caramel tart that looks as fancy as anything you would find at a restaurant, thanks to two very clever shortcuts.

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No-Bake Strawberry Icebox Cake

This icebox cake is as simple as it gets, inspired by the buckets of strawberries at the markets in late spring, and by one of our favorite desserts: strawberry shortcake.

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Lemon Icebox Pie

No-bake lemon icebox pie has a creamy bite from cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, and lemon juice and zest — topped with Cool Whip or whipped cream.

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No-Bake Fat Elvis Peanut Butter & Banana Pie

There are very few cravings as strong as the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Combine it with pretzels, bananas and salty goodness and what do you have? A no-bake Fat Elvis pie, that’s what!

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No-Bake Boston Cream Pie Strata

An icebox cake composed of layers of graham crackers and fresh, homemade vanilla pudding, topped with fudge frosting. When it sits together in the fridge overnight, it melds into a luxurious cake-like texture. So yummy, and easy, too!

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No-Bake Sheet Pan Lemon Yogurt Tart

An easy no-bake lemon yogurt tart that feeds a crowd and is perfect for potlucks and parties.

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Coconut Panna Cotta

This coconut panna cotta is made with coconut milk and cream, gelatin, and sweetened with maple syrup making it a lovely dessert for many different diets.

Meringues

Nothing captures the light airy nature of spring baking quite like a meringue. It bakes up in a cool oven and is lovely served with whipped cream and berries.

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Light, Airy Pavlova

The hallmark of this beloved New Zealand and Australian dessert is that amazing, plate-sized layer of meringue. It’s crispy on the outside, but soft as marshmallows on the inside.

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Chocolate Meringue Cookies

These dreamy cookies will give your Christmas cookie platter a pop of color.

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Berry Pavlova Roulade

This berry-studded dessert is simple to make, but it creates a huge impression when served. It is both rustic and elegant and is always met with amazed glee. The meringue bakes up crisp on the outside and delicately soft on the inside.

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Classic French Meringue

With a crisp outer shell, slightly chewy center, and a subtle sweetness, baked meringue is a melt-in-your-mouth delight.

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Vegan Meringue Cookies

Harness the egg-replacing power of aquafaba (aka chickpea water) to whip up easy vegan meringue cookies.

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Halfway Cookie Bars

Chewy cookie on the bottom, marshmallow-like meringue on top, and a rich layer of chocolate sandwiched in between — these bar cookies are the best!

Easter Breads

Sweet breads are traditional in many cultures. They are used to celebrate the arrival of spring and they do double duty as centerpieces to your Easter table.

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Italian Sweet Easter Egg Breads

This bread takes its cue from the flavors and traditions most often found in Sicily — namely the anise and orange — and delivers a rich and tender texture that might remind you of challah bread.

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Shoreek (Egyptian Sugared Brioche Rolls)

These fluffy, buttery rolls dotted with crunchy sugar are perfect for Orthodox Easter or a celebration of everyday, with a cup of coffee or tea.

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Easter Bread with Raisins and Sugar Cubes (Aachener Poschweck)

This gorgeously burnished sweet bread has been an Easter tradition in Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, since medieval times.

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Earl Grey Hot Cross Buns

This recipe replaces the water in the dough with strongly brewed Earl Grey tea, which contains citrusy bergamot and floral notes. It pairs perfectly with the lemon and orange zest also in the buns, making them even more fragrant.

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Strawberry Cream Cheese Swirly Buns

Think of them as a cross between a cheese danish, strawberries and cream, and the dough from your favorite cinnamon roll, all in one irresistible package.

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Easiest-Ever Sticky Buns

These easy buns start with store-bought pizza dough and are rolled, sliced, and snuggled into a cast-iron pan in a pool of brown sugar-caramel sauce with lots of chopped nuts.

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Sticky Ginger Buns

These buttery, not-too-sweet, pull-apartable buns are bursting with spicy ginger flavor.

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Cranberry-Orange Quick Bread

This orange-scented quick bread is studded with tart cranberries and is great for breakfast or as an Easter dessert.

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