42 St. Patrick’s Day Desserts, from Guinness Brownies to Irish Cream Tiramisu
Can’t make it to Dublin to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day? No worries: You can still claim the luck of the Irish in your own kitchen. Even after you’ve had your fill of soda bread and corned beef, you’ll want to make room for sweet treats like chocolate stout cake, Guinness brownies and a potato candy that has nothing to do with spuds. Here, 42 St. Patrick’s Day desserts that are better than a pot of gold.
RELATED: The Best Traditional Irish Food to Make This St. Patrick’s Day
1. Baileys Cookies and Cream Parfait
Save the yogurt and fruit parfaits for Easter. These layered desserts are just boozy enough, thanks to a generous splash of Irish cream. (Sorry, kiddos, this one is adults only.)
2. ‘Potato’ Candy
This regional confection is popular in Philadelphia around St. Patrick’s Day. The sweet bites are called potatoes because they look like potatoes—but they taste like a fancy Mounds candy bar coated with cinnamon instead of chocolate.
3. Chocolate Stout Cake
Sure, Valentine’s Day gets all the love when it comes to decadent desserts, but let’s not overlook the fact that Guinness and chocolate make a delightful pair. Luck of the Irish, indeed.
4. Baileys Coffee Granita
Essentially an “adult” slushy, we love the idea of serving this frozen treat as an alternative to after-dinner espressos. Even better, it calls for just six ingredients.
5. Baileys Chocolate Truffles
Requiring only five ingredients and two hours of your time, you’ll be set with a gourmet dessert and still have time to binge watch Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
6. No-Churn Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
No one will pinch you if you present them with a bowl of this minty green ice cream. And FYI, if you can make whipped cream, you’re halfway there.
7. Irish Apple Cake with Whiskey Crème Anglaise
If you’re keen on celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in a more traditional way, this cake has your name on it. It’s a popular dessert served in Irish households, and you can top it with confectioners’ sugar, a creamy whiskey sauce or both.
8. Guinness Brownies
Before you diss a brownie made with beer, allow us to explain. Guinness stout is commonly paired with chocolate in baking for its deep, coffee-like flavor. (In other words, it doesn’t taste like beer in the slightest.)
9. Shortbread Cookies
These crumbly cookies made from sugar, butter and flour were actually invented by the Scottish (and leavened with yeast). Over time, the yeast was swapped for butter—an Irish staple—and that’s how shortbread as we know it today came to be.
10. Spicy Chocolate Stout Cake
We were so entranced by the swoops of peanut butter frosting, we almost forgot there’s a rich, cinnamon-spiked chocolate cake underneath there.
11. Double Dark Chocolate Marshmallow Mint Chex Bars
You don’t have to be Irish or a pro baker to whip up this quick, sweet snack. Make a batch for your kids’ lunches, your office party or just to hoard at home.
12. Homemade Irish Cream
It might only take ten minutes to make your own Irish cream, but once you try the homemade version (made with sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream), you’ll understand why it’s a dessert.
13. Guinness Floats
Behold the easiest St. Patrick’s Day dessert ever: Just scoop, pour, drizzle and sip.
14. Carrot Cake Doughnuts with Cream Cheese Glaze
St. Paddy’s Day means spring is on the way, and nothing says spring like a moist carrot cake doughnut with a tangy cream cheese topping. Plus, what better way to start the day?
15. Irish Cream Tiramisu
Swap the usual booze for Irish cream and voilà, a festive dessert. It tastes so good we want to dive in with a spoon, but that’s neither here nor there.
16. Snickerdoodle Lucky Charms Cookies
Hearts, stars, horseshoes and the gang are teaming up with chewy, cinnamon-y cookies for the cookie of our childhood dreams.
17. Gluten-Free Matcha Cupcakes with Matcha Frosting
They’re as green as the rolling hills of Ireland. The cupcakes are sweetened with honey, which tames the bitter notes of the matcha and adds a ton of moisture.
18. Baileys Mint Chocolate Cream Pie
It looks super impressive, but the press-in cookie crust and easy pudding filling make it entirely foolproof.
19. Guinness Sheet Cake with Candied Pecans
If a Texas sheet cake and a pint of Guinness had a very delicious baby, this would be it. We don’t always agree with nuts in desserts, but these candied pecans are *chef’s kiss.*
20. Stout Chocolate Brownies
Psst: You don’t have to use Guinness when the recipe calls for stout. These brownies are made with Murphy’s, but you can use any dark beer.
21. Yogurt and Olive Oil Pistachio Cake with Lemon Buttercream
Nothing against green food dye, but there’s something much more appealing about the springy hue of a real pistachio.
22. Brown Butter Braided Cinnamon Roll Cake
The key to making it holiday-ready (and mouthwateringly good) is to use the best Irish butter you can find. Thank us later.
23. Pistachio Cookies
Kiss us, we just made you a batch of these chewy, gooey, chocolate-studded cookies.
24. Lucky Charms Cereal Milk Confetti Cupcakes
Plan ahead when steeping your cereal milk so the rest of the recipe comes together in a flash. The edible gold leaf is optional, but we like the way it takes things over the top.
25. Miniature Banoffee Cobblers
This dessert is *technically* English, but it’s also popular throughout Ireland. And why not? It checks every texture box: gooey caramel, soft bananas, airy whipped cream and crisp graham cracker crumbles.
26. Irish Apple Cake Doughnuts with Whiskey Glaze
Traditional Irish dessert, but make it doughnuts because why not? If you don’t already have a doughnut pan, you can find them online.
27. Green Velvet Doughnuts
And if apples aren’t your thing, maybe green velvet (aka mildly chocolate cake with plenty of green dye) is.
28. Banoffee Pie with Honeycomb
Here’s another take on banoffee, this time with a crispy, caramel-like honeycomb topping for even more texture.
29. Guinness Chocolate Glazed Doughnut Holes
Hot tip: You can make baked-not-fried doughnut holes if you have a muffin tin on hand.
30. Baileys Irish Cream Cake
This pretty cake contains Irish cream in both the batter and the glaze for a double-dose of flavor.
31. Homemade Shamrock Shakes
Those golden arches don’t know what’s coming. You can make your shake plain or add cookie crumbles and chocolate syrup for a major upgrade.
32. Lucky Charms Marshmallow Treats
Sometimes making a festive snack is as easy as swapping in marshmallow cereal in an already-simple recipe. Pretty ingenious, if you ask us.
33. No-Bake Irish Cream Cheesecake
You had us at no-bake. This creamy cake doesn’t require a fussy water bath or an oven, and while the texture is lighter than a classic New York cheesecake, it’s no less delicious.
34. Beer Truffles with Crushed Pretzels
You already know what we’re going to say: Use a stout-style beer (preferably an Irish one) to stick with the theme.
35. Boozy Lucky Charms Cereal Milkshakes with Marshmallow Frosting
Sip responsibly: These cute shakes are made with marshmallow vodka for a kick.
36. Pistachio Drop Cookies
We’re a little bit obsessed with this simple recipe. The cookies come together in one bowl and call for just six ingredients, and they taste like heaven thanks to a brown butter icing.
37. One-Bowl, Eight-Ingredient Irish Coffee Fudge Brownies
There’s coffee. There’s Baileys. There’s pools of melted chocolate. What more could you need?
38. Chocolate Stout Macaroons
Coconut and stout sounds unusual on paper, but one bite of these sweet, chewy, chocolatey cookies and the combination makes total sense.
39. Pistachio Shortbread Cookies
It’s not easy being green…unless you’re a buttery, nutty, obsession-worthy shortbread cookie.
40. Peanut Butter Chocolate Stout Cake
Pull out all the stops and make a towering, decadent chocolate cake this St. Patrick’s Day. After all, what are holidays for if not for eating?
41. Rainbow Waffle Cake
We can’t promise a pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, but we can promise you’ll be making waffle cakes for every occasion here on out.
42. Frozen Irish Cream Cappuccinos
Top of the morning? On second thought, we’ll save these for dessert.
