13 Weekend Dessert Recipes

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Dulce de Leche Cookie Bars

With a buttery shortbread crust and creamy layer of dulce de leche, Food Network Magazine's chocolate chip-and-pecan-studded cookie bars will become your new favorite party treat.Bonus: They're extremely packable.

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Photo: Travis Rathbone

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Basic Coconut Macaroons

Crank out a big batch of cookies in less than hour, without even using your mixer. Food Network Magazine’s five-ingredient coconut macaroon recipe yields about 30 perfectly chewy and delightfully sweet treats.

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Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

You won’t find vanilla ice cream this rich and creamy in the freezer aisle. Calling for 10 egg yolks along with cream and vanilla bean, this decadent home-churned dessert is a worthy weekend splurge.

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Photo: Andrew Purcell

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Rum French Toast a la Mode

Breakfast for dessert is a playful way to cap a nice weekend dinner. Glam up French toast with crusty baguette slices, spiked maple syrup and rum raisin ice cream.

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Photo: Kana Okada ©

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Chocolate-Hazelnut Icebox Cake

For the person with simultaneous love for cake and fear of baking, icebox cake is the solution — it's as easy as layering graham crackers with chocolate-hazelnut spread and whipped cream. After it spends a night in the fridge, you’ve got a picture-perfect dessert.

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Photo: Kana Okada ©

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Gingersnap-Mango Icebox Cake

Crunchy gingersnaps transform into a lovely spiced cake when nestled between dollops of coconut whipped cream overnight. Add a pop of color to the coconut-covered dessert with fresh mango tossed with lime zest, sugar and a pinch of salt.

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Photo: Anna Williams

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Strawberry Napoleons with Prosecco Cream

Frozen puff pastry is the all-star ingredient when it comes to making easy and elegant desserts, like these strawberry Napoleons. Serve each pastry with a glass of bubbly — you don't want to waste that bottle of Prosecco you opened to make the whipped cream.

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Bittersweet Chocolate Ice Cream

When making homemade chocolate ice cream, go for the bittersweet variety of chocolate. You'll get a rich cocoa flavor that your chocoholic friends will surely appreciate.

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Photo: Kana Okada

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Maple-Walnut Cheesecake

The combination of maple syrup and buttery walnuts deserves more credit. Make Food Network Magazine’s maple cheesecake with a walnut graham cracker crust and you'll agree.

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Photo: Levi Brown

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Watermelon Fruit Basket Cake

Fruit salad is infinitely more appealing when it’s sitting atop a beautiful bowl cake that looks like a watermelon. To make the faux fruit, dye cake batter pinkish red and add chocolate chips to look like seeds.

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Photo: Con Poulos

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Lemon Meringue Tartlets

Rather than struggling to make perfect slices from one large pastry, serve individual tartlets. The addition of orange juice and limoncello in this lemon custard seriously raises the bar for all future lemon tarts.

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Lemon-Berry Icebox Cake

Icebox cake is the perfect make-ahead dessert, especially when it's too hot to turn on the oven. This recipe for lemon cookie cake with berry cream cheese filling will come in handy for many future summer BBQs.

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Photo: Kana Okada

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Pear-Gingersnap Cheesecake

This creamy spiced cheesecake encapsulates all of the comforting flavors of fall. The caramelized pears and molasses-syrup drizzle make it a worthy challenger to Thanksgiving pie, but no one will complain if it makes an appearance on any given weekend.

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