18 Easy Pantry Desserts You Can Make Right Now

The cupboard is never really bare, even if it’s been days since a shop. Open up that pantry and take a look. That lone can of sweetened condensed milk? The tahini you bought to make salad dressing (and did you ever even make it)? Don’t even take those box mixes for granted. You’re not destined to just make the cake or brownies because your supplies are low. Here are some of our easiest ideas (many of which come together with just a few ingredients) for when that hankering for a treat arises and you think you’ve got no options—but actually there are so many homemade possibilities once you know what to look for.

With a pretty basic baking pantry plus some lemon, you can make an excellent cake for dessert or snacks. No need for frosting here. There’s lemon juice in the batter, but also in a bright and lemony glaze on top. Pump it up further by grating in some zest before you juice your citrus.

This TikTok star went viral for a reason. With a tub of whipped topping and a box of cake mix—any flavor!—you can make crinkle cookies. Make a few different ones for a range of colors and flavors to fill the cookie jar.

This seemingly impossible recipe turns just eggs and chocolate chips into brownies. The key is separating the eggs so that each component can play to its strengths. The whites are whipped to sturdy, stiff peaks, lending lift, and the yolks go in with the chocolate, for creaminess and supporting the structure. Who knew? Well, we should have, because flourless chocolate cakes exist, and are oh-so delectable.

Here’s a trick you’ll be eyeing every time you’ve got leftover rice. If you’ve got a pint of ice cream in your freezer and some leftover rice, you’re three-quarters of the way to the simplest dessert. Just combine them in saucepan and sprinkle with cinnamon, and there you go.

This bark uses two very specific ingredients that you may or may not have on hand—but if you do, you’ll be bowled over by how simple (and cool!) it is to make. Just mix together sweetened shredded coconut and condensed milk, then bake it, for a bark that is toasty, coconutty, crispy on the edges and chewy in the center. Watch out, because you might invent adaptations for your toaster oven and be ending most nights with a little bit of bark…

This recipe is such a revelation, you’ll be making it even when you’re not out of flour. Just peanut butter, sugar and egg make the most melt-in-the-mouth, crispy cookies that are super redolent of peanut. They’re ideal for anyone keeping gluten-free, too.

Whether you call them muddy buddies or puppy chow, we can never resist that chocolate and peanut butter sweet-and-salty delight that you can snack on like chips. Usually they are made with crisp squares cereal, but here, since they’re made with corn chips, they really take that underlying salty crunch to a whole new level. Who’s winning the big game? Why, we think it might be you.

These cute and tasty sandwiches take a bare pantry and turn it into an asset. The “cookies” doing the sandwiching are actually saltines, which somehow look toasty due to being whole wheat (but you could certainly go with classic saltines as well). Brownies are baked right on top of them, and then ice cream is spread on top of that. The whole is frozen, then cut into individual portions, which, by virtue of being based on saltines, are truly just the right size.

Cornmeal is the dark horse hero in the baker’s pantry! It lends a sweet toastiness and incredible texture to cake and cookies alike. Here, you end up with slice-and-bakes, so a log of the dough in your fridge can pinch-hit any time you need a dessert on the fly.

A wonderful thing about fine bakery bread is the same thing that forces you to use it up quickly: no preservatives! That’s why the good stuff gets hard after just a day or two. But don’t toss it just yet. Do a quick checklist for the rest of the ingredients and see what you’ve got in the pantry, and transform that neglected loaf into a seriously irresistible treat.

The existence of pudding mixes has made from-scratch pudding seem like it must be difficult, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes it uses eggs to thicken, but often it just uses cornstarch, as in this pudding, which gets an interesting profile from the cinnamon and cayenne. And let’s not forget the old-fashioned star that is butterscotch—that deliciousness that occurs when butter is cooked with brown sugar.

These are a super fun “raid the pantry” type cookie that everyone can get in on. Their base is cake mix, but beyond that, feel free to follow our recommendations for add-ins or strike your own path based on what you’ve got. The sweet and salty mix of things is sure to please all cravings.

In its most classic form, shortbread is a four-ingredient cookie, just flour, butter, sugar and salt coming together to marvelous effect. Here, however, the kind of sugar is manipulated for a specific texture—confectioners’ for a little bit of a delicateness and granulated for structure and crunch. They are so excellent with tea or coffee, or anytime, really.

When you’ve got brownie mix in the house, you can really have some fun. Here, they’re pumped up with an egg, butter and some chocolate chips, just enough to make them hold a proper cookie shape. They will turn out thin but still fudgy and chewy, like a brownie sent to school to be a cookie, which is essentially what these are!

Another entry in the magic that a can of condensed milk can lend is this fudge, which you can prepare in your microwave. Often fudge requires cooking sugar with a candy thermometer to land at just the right texture. Here, the condensed milk sidesteps that necessity, and transforms chocolate chips into simply ideal fudge.

Did you buy tahini for a recipe, and now have quite a bit leftover? This sesame paste is a kitchen all-star, lending body and richness to a salad dressing and of course, creaminess and flavor to blended dips. But it can also be the headliner, as in these cookies, which are a symphony of everything sesame. Don’t have the two colors of seeds in the house? No problem, they will be good with whatever you’ve got, or with neither.

No need for the double boiler here! Ree Drummond lets chocolate hazelnut spread do all the work with an already-blended creamy confection. Mix with flour and eggs and bake; this might become your go-to brownie—but be sure to upgrade to the large jar of the spread so that you’re not constantly running out.