22 French Desserts For Any Occasion

Few cuisines place desserts on quite the same pedestal as French cuisine. French desserts tend to feature simple, fresh ingredients, like seasonal fruit or local dairy. Some of the best dishes were created centuries ago (think crème brûlée or clafoutis), and some much more recently, but all are decadent and delicious. One fine example is the Opera cake. This light cake is made with a fluffy almond sponge, layered with bittersweet chocolate ganache and mocha buttercream. The entire cake is enrobed in a glossy chocolate glaze and goes well with an after-dinner espresso.

Crème brûlée is a rich and creamy dessert made of a custard baked in a water bath. The signature finishing touch is a topping of sugar, caramelized with a blowtorch or under a broiler.

French for “thousand sheets,” this flaky dessert has layers of crisp puff pastry filled with fluffy pastry cream and fresh fruit or jam. This particular recipe uses a lemon-flavored cream and pairs it with a double dose of crisp freeze-dried raspberries and tart raspberry jam.

Once you have your hands on the necessary madeleine pan, the recipe isn’t that difficult to get right. Somewhere between a soft cookie and small cake, madeleine batter is flavored with lemon zest and vanilla bean, then finished with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Baba au rhum is a rich, yeast-leavened cake studded with dried fruit, soaked in rum and sometimes filled with whipped cream or pastry cream.

Sweet and tangy, traditional Crêpes Suzette is sometimes served table-side at high-end restaurants, with the final sauce set ablaze to cook off the Grand Marnier. If you’re intimidated by the idea of cooking crêpes from scratch, you can always buy those at the store and focus on nailing the citrusy sauce.

A classic pots de crème is akin to the French precursor to American chocolate pudding. It’s denser and richer, and served a topping of fresh whipped cream.

This dessert comes from the Limousin region of France and features fruit (traditionally black cherries) baked in a thick, eggy batter. Other fruit, like pears in this case, are a welcome alteration, along with a spoonful creme fraiche and shower of powdered sugar.

Profiteroles are sometimes called cream puffs in the United States, where they can be stuffed with pastry cream, whipped cream or ice cream. The batter is cooked on the stovetop, then piped onto a sheet tray and baked until golden brown and airy.

A financier is not unlike a muffin, but with almond flour in the batter to create a crumbly, rich texture. Many have fruit baked into the top, like this version, which uses slices of ripe pear.

A soufflé is an airy bit of culinary magic, notoriously tricky to pull off but incredibly satisfying. Make sure to time your recipe so you can serve immediately—the puffy top doesn’t last forever.

Tarte tatin is an upside-down pastry that begins with fruit, typically apples, caramelized in butter and sugar and topped with pastry before baking to golden brown. To finish, the dish is inverted, converting the pastry to the base and revealing the golden, baked slices of fruit.

An éclair is like any pate a choux cream puff, but piped into a log shape instead of a ball. The filling is traditionally a light vanilla whipped cream, and the entire confection is dipped in melted chocolate.

A crème caramel is not unlike a crème brûlée, but with a base of caramel sauce that gets inverted to the top, rather than a topping of caramelized sugar. The ingredients are simple, but better-quality eggs and cream will yield a superior final flavor.

A sable is a French cookie with a notably buttery, crumbly texture. They can be made in a variety of flavors, like the double chocolate in this recipe.

Making classic French macarons at home is definitely not for the culinary novice, and a few specialty tools are needed to achieve this finicky dessert. The challenge lies in the airy yet crisp almond flour cookies, which will only develop their signature shape with just the right technique.

While it may sound fancy, a galette is a more rustic version of an American pie, using a freeform, hand folded crust that bakes on a sheet tray instead of in a pie dish. This galette has a base of nutty almond frangipane topped with sugar-coated apple slices.

A craquelin starts as a typical pate a choux dough, which gets topped with a special coating that bakes to a crunchy texture. These have a raspberry-flavored topping, and the final puffs are filled with chocolate mousse.

If you’ve perfected pate a choux and want to step it up a notch, challenge yourself with a show-stopping croquembouche. Fill the puffs with a mix of chocolate and vanilla cream and pile them in a towering mountain, with a halo of crunchy sugar strands.

Named after Saint Honoré, the St. Honoré dessert has a base of puff pastry topped with a ring of choux pastry. The center and the ring are filled with a pastry cream (chocolate, in this recipe) and topped with small cream puffs dipped in caramelized sugar.

Fluffy and light, a classic chocolate mousse is created from just four ingredients (minus the whipped cream topping). Choose a high-quality 72% cacao chocolate, which will make a big difference in the final taste of the rich dessert.