28 Delicious Apple Desserts
From cider cake to Tarte Tatin, here's how to enjoy sweet applications for all those apples this season.
When fall rolls around, apple pie is an obvious dessert — bursting with fresh, soft apples and a crispy crust. However, there are plenty of other ways we love to make the most of apple season, including apple cake, fritters, ice cream sandwiches, and fluffy apple sharlotka. Read on for those recipes and more autumnal apple desserts we can't get enough of.
Apple Upside-Down Cake
Cara Cormack
If you have a couple of apples, you probably have everything else needed to make this dessert that comes together in just 20 minutes of active time without having to pull out a mixer.
Tarte Tatin
Morgan Hunt Glaze / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Josh Hoggle
Tarte Tatin is a French dessert for which apples are caramelized in a skillet with butter and sugar, then topped with a round of pastry dough and baked. Benoît Guichard's recipe is award-winning.
Gorgeous Glazed Apple Fritters
Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Christine Keely
Apple fritters are one of fall’s greatest pleasures — and they’re surprisingly easy to make at home after apple picking.
Spiced Brown-Butter Apples
Dessert doesn’t get easier than this pan of tender roasted apples drenched in browned butter and cozy spices.
Cinnamon-Apple Babka
Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Ali Ramee / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
Cinnamon-Apple BabkaTender, buttery pastry dough is wrapped around sliced apples that are seasoned with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and ginger for this fall dessert.
Apple-Rum Spice Cake
A tender chiffon cake pairs well with the light and billowy frosting, seasoned with spicy-fresh ginger juice. Warm spices and a shot of rum add a kick to the apple compote that makes this a centerpiece dessert for the adult table.
Apple-Pomegranate Cobbler
This juicy and bright apple cobbler is just the right amount of sweet, with an irresistibly tender and crunchy crust on top.
Maple-Apple Upside-Down Cake
This is one of the best upside-down cakes ever — the maple syrup infuses both the apples and the cake, making the dessert taste like a stack of apple pancakes.
Apple Cake with Cranberries
For his moist and buttery upside-down cake, Food & Wine's Justin Chapple layers apples with cranberries and brown sugar, then tops them with a fantastic sour cream batter.
Country Apple Galette
Chef Jacques Pépin loves to serve this delicate apple tart as a buffet dessert, since it's beautiful, easy to slice, and simple to eat, pizza-style, while standing. The miraculously easy and versatile pastry dough comes together in a food processor in less than 20 seconds and can be filled with all sorts of fruits or vegetables. Because the tart is free-form, the pastry can be rolled into either a round or a rectangle.
Apple Pie Bars
These bars have a nutty, streusel-like topping and a crisp shortbread crust. It's America's iconic dessert, transformed into an indulgent snack.
Double-Crust Apple Pie
F&W's former senior test kitchen editor Grace Parisi uses a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady, and Golden Delicious apples for this iconic dessert.
Granny Smith Apple and Brown Butter Custard Tart
Pastry chef Kate Neumann often showcases rich, nutty, fragrant browned butter in her desserts. Here, she adds it to a sweet custard loaded with caramelized apples and baked in a buttery tart shell.
Apple Bread Pudding
© Anson Smart
Chef Gail Simmons to the rescue! How does she transform a lackluster Top Chef Season 3 bread pudding into a standout dessert? By sautéing apples in brandy and butter and soaking them alongside brioche in lots of vanilla custard before baking.
Spiced Upside-Down Apple Bundt Cake
David Guas, co-author of the cookbook DamGoodSweet, tops his apple bundt cake with a nicely salty streusel of pecans and toasted rolled oats. He bakes the streusel on its own to make it extraordinarily crisp, then pats it over the warm cake right out of the oven.
Apple and Olive Oil Bundt Cake
At Coyle's Bakeshop in Seattle, chef-owner Rachael Coyle always keeps a bundt cake or two in the case. This autumnal version, an adaptation of an Italian apple cake, is moist and light, fragrant with freshly ground spices and studded with chunks of fruit. In the spring, substitute fresh rhubarb for the apples.
Apple Tart with Almond Cream
In this delicious dessert, the thin, crisp pastry shell is filled with a layer of almond cream made from both finely ground and coarsely chopped nuts that give the tart layers of texture. The thinly sliced apples on top caramelize as the tart bakes.
Apple Cake with Toffee Crust
When pastry chef Lara Atkins was little, her mother made this cake for her bridge club; Atkins remembers how she and her brothers would have to wait (and wait and wait) for their slices until all the ladies of the club had served themselves. Atkins now makes the cake for her son, who never has to wait for his piece.
Apple Pie Granita
Emeril Lagasse transforms natural apple juice into a refreshing granita in 15 minutes.
Apple Pandowdy
Pie for a crowd, this pandowdy uses a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady, and Golden Delicious apples for the perfect fall dessert.
Apple Cider Cream Pie
In 2009, chef Allison Kave and her boyfriend, Jay Horton, won Brooklyn's Pie Bake-Off with this clever pie. The challenge was to use a local ingredient, so they chose apple cider and developed this delicious combination of cream pie and apple pie.
Apple Sharlotka
© CHRISTINA HOLMES
Chef Matt Danko uses his father's recipe to make sharlotka, a deliciously light and fluffy Russian apple cake.
Apple Cider Cake
If you love apple cider doughnuts, try this tender, moist cake next.
Apple Pie à la Mode Ice Cream Sandwiches
Top Chef winner Kristen Kish designed this dessert to honor both of her grandmothers, one known for her apple pie and the other for her snickerdoodles. Kish folds spiced apple pie filling into vanilla ice cream, then sandwiches it between chewy snickerdoodle cookies.
Apple Tart with Apricot Glaze
Frank Stitt, owner of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Alabama, started his culinary education by working for the late great cookbook author Richard Olney in Provence, France. This tart is the final dish in a dinner party menu designed by Stitt and inspired by Olney's love of seasonal produce and great wine.
Deep-Dish All-American Cinnamon Apple Pie
This pie — one of our 40 best recipes — gets its intensely apple-y flavor from macerating the apples in sugar for an hour. The liquid drained from the apples is simmered with a hit of butter until a syrup forms. That rich syrup is mixed with the apples, piled into the crust, and baked until tender and delicious.
Apple Crisp with Dried Cranberries
For this dessert, chef Lee Woolver recommends a tart apple, like the Northern Spy variety that grows all over upstate New York. To make the recipe more decadent, he often adds chocolate chips.
Caramelized Apple Clafoutis
This lightly sweet pastry, studded with caramelized apple, is one component of an elaborate dish entitled Brillat-Savarin. Its major ingredients — apples, créme fraîche, Calvados, and the Brillat-Savarin cheese — all come from Normandy, France.
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