Our Most Challenging Dessert Recipes

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Ready your oven mitts and bust out the baking tools: from classic kugelhopf to a frozen mocha dacquoise cake, our hardest dessert recipes don't come easy. (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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The ultimate danish from Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Get the recipe for <a href="https://www.saveur.com/sour-cherry-and-pistachio-danish-recipe/">Sour Cherry and Pistachio Danish</a> (Christina Holmes/)Image may be NSFW.
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These French pastries are the real deal: crunchy and caramelized to a deep mahogany brown on the outside, moist and custardy within, and deeply perfumed with dark rum and vanilla bean. Get the recipe for <a href="https://www.saveur.com/caneles-recipe/">Canelés de Bordeaux</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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With three colorful layers of ice cream domed atop a fudgy, flourless chocolate cake, our version of this retro dessert is a project perfect for celebrations. (Especially if you make your own ice cream: We used our homemade Pistachio Gelato and Raspberry Ice Cream.) You can vary the assembly as you like—layering the ice cream in any pattern or thickness, or flambéing the meringue topping or not. But whatever you choose, give yourself a day or two in advance to prepare. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/baked-alaska-recipe">Baked Alaska Flambé</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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Pastry chef Christine Ferber's not-too-sweet kugelhopf, an Alsatian cake baked in a distinctive ring mold, has just a few choice raisins per slice. Enjoy with a sweet Alsatian wine, like gewürztraminer or muscat. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/kugelhopf-recipe">Kugelhopf Cake</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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At New York's Milk Bar, Christina Tosi makes this towering cake every spring, when sweet and tiny tristar strawberries are in season. This is by no means an everyday cake, but it's worth the work that you'll put in, and worthy of a special occasion. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/strawberry-lemon-layer-cake-recipe">Strawberry Lemon Cake</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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These sandwich cookies, adapted from chef Frederico Ribeiro of New York's Te Company, are an homage to the classic Taiwanese pineapple cake. Here a super-buttery vanilla bean shortbread gets a nutty dose of hazelnut flour, and sweet pineapple-rosemary jam gets balanced by the spicy, fermented, and grassy flavor of Japanese yuzu kosho paste. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/pineapple-linzer-cookie-recipe">Spicy Pineapple Linzer Cookies</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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When it comes to eclairs, homemade is always better. Bakeries have to chill their filled eclairs, which makes for soggy centers and mushy crusts; you can freshly fill yours at home and eat them right away. This recipe is adapted from pastry chef Scott Cioe from Park Hyatt New York. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/classic-eclair-recipe">Classic Eclairs</a> (Farideh Sadeghin/)Image may be NSFW.
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This version of the classic NOLA dessert combines a rich buttermilk cake with both lemon curd and chocolate fillings, surrounded by a vanilla German buttercream and ganache. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/new-orleans-doberge-cake-recipe">New Orleans Doberge Cake</a> (Ryan Liebe | Food Styling Mariana Velasquez/)Image may be NSFW.
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We've got an easy recipe for this French Christmas dessert that never fails to inspire joy during the holidays (or any time of year). Get the recipe for <a href="https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Buche-de-Noel-Recipe/">Bûche de Noël (Yule Log)</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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Literally named "crunch in the mouth," croquembouche is an edible monument of caramelized pastry. Get the recipe for <a href="https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Croquembouche/">Croquembouche (Caramel-Glazed Cream Puffs)</a> (Todd Coleman/)Image may be NSFW.
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Beautiful homemade croissants, each containing a bar of high-quality dark chocolate, make for an impressive and indulgent addition to a breakfast spread. Get the recipe for <a href="https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Classic-Pain-au-Chocolat/">Pain au Chocolat</a> (Todd Coleman/)Image may be NSFW.
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This multilayered French dessert of baked almond meringue, buttercream, and rum-spiked whipped cream tastes best doused in a dark chocolate sauce and served with strong coffee to offset some of the sweetness of the cream layers. Not cutting the cake immediately after it's assembled helps to prevent the meringues from cracking while slicing through. This recipe is adapted from the cake at Buck's in Louisville, Kentucky. Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/mocha-dacquoise-cake-recipe">Mocha Dacquoise Cake</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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Think of these silky, chewy, coconutty gummies as richer, more flavorful Jello jigglers, made with a steamed batter of coconut milk with sticky rice flour and tapioca and arrowroot starches. It's a labor of love: to form the neat layers, you have to let the previous layer steam enough until set but still a little tacky before adding the next. The cake also benefits enormously from making your own pandan extract; though you can buy pre-made extract in Thai groceries, it won't compare to the unique sweet herbal fragrance of the fresh leaves. (You can buy fresh or frozen pandan leaves online or in well-stocked Thai groceries.) Get the recipe for <a href="http://www.saveur.com/thai-khanom-chan-recipe">Thai Steamed Coconut-Pandan Cake (Khanom Chan)</a> (Matt Taylor-Gross/)Image may be NSFW.
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