22 Travel-Friendly Thanksgiving Desserts That Are Easy To Take On the Go

When you’re planning to hit the road for the holidays, the last thing you want to deal with is figuring out how to transport a fussy dessert. Nobody wants to hold a pie plate on their lap the entire ride—or worry about a sheet pan or casserole dish sliding around in the trunk. But don’t give up on gifting your host a homemade Thanksgiving dessert just yet. We’ve got plenty of travel-friendly ideas that you can make in advance and take on the go, including Thanksgiving cookies, fall-themed cupcakes and even pumpkin bread. One of our favorites? These decadent chocolate brownies, topped with a sweet and crunchy layer of pecan pie. To ensure the layers stay distinct when these two classic desserts come together, the brownie is baked first then the nut filling is layered over it and baked again. In the oven, the syrup seeps into the brownies, keeping them moist and rich.

Much like carrot cake, pumpkin desserts pair beautifully with cream cheese frosting. Perhaps it's the tang that the cream cheese brings, a foil to the luscious, warming mouthfeel of spiced pumpkin, but this pairing always brings desserts to life! Utilizied here, and topped delicately with individual pecans, these cookies marry sweet, sour and slightly savory — in one delicious bite.

Though you usually shouldn’t mess with a classic, we did, and we’re glad. We transformed everyone’s favorite apple pie into an all-new dessert by giving cupcakes a gooey apple pie filling and the transformative finale: a slightly tangy sour cream whipped topping.

We turned the fall staple into a cool and refreshing no-bake dip perfect for family gatherings.

Double the holiday fun with these spiced pumpkin gingerbread bars! Soft and cakey with a slight chew, these bars feature two distinct layers: pumpkin and gingerbread, which get drizzled with an irresistible cream cheese icing. While the bars look impressive, the recipe is very easy to put together with a minimal number of bowls and no electric mixer.

The dough for these spiced autumn cookies is easily made in a food processor, much like pie dough, but with softened butter. Get festive with the decorating by making fall leaves or turkeys using halved candy corns or pecans for the tail feathers.

If sweet potato is your pie of choice then these cookies are for you: They channel all the flavor of that Southern favorite in a fun two-bite package. The crust comes together quickly and gets pressed into a mini-muffin tin, no rolling necessary. We bake the crumble topping separately to keep it crisp and easy to put on the cookies after they come out of the oven. Any extra would be great on ice cream, yogurt or fruit — or make a double batch and keep it on hand for a quick topping for a future baked dessert.

When you think of warm, comforting, winter spices, what do you think of? We think of cinnamon, clove, cardamom...which naturally makes us think of cookies! The classic snickerdoodle is a cinnamon-lover's delight, but here, we swap out plain cinnamon for some seasonal pumpkin pie spice and add pumpkin puree to the dough for a fluffy cookie with a chewy crust — every cookie aficionado's dream.

You can enjoy three of your favorite Thanksgiving pies in just one dessert with these tasty pie bars. Layers of prepared pie dough are baked until golden brown, then stacked among pecan pie, pumpkin pie and apple pie fillings, sprinkled with a super-simple crumb topping and baked to perfection. Serve the bars as is or a la mode like traditional pie for an impressive and fun holiday treat.

These sweet cupcakes are a fall favorite. The tender, moist cake is topped with tangy cream cheese icing spiked with tons of cinnamon. The coziest cupcakes for the coziest season!

This delicious rum cake is the perfect way to liven up your Thanksgiving dessert table. It’s packed with classic fall flavors, perfect for a crowd and super-easy to make thanks to boxed yellow cake mix and instant vanilla pudding — a baker’s secret that creates an unbelievably moist cake with delicious vanilla flavor. A true Thanksgiving-worthy treat, it has a decadent buttered rum glaze and a crunchy topping and filling featuring pecans, white chocolate, dark brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. It’s amazingly tasty, and if there are leftovers, you’re in luck: The cake stays tender thanks to the glaze and pudding mix.

A Thanksgiving spread — or any holiday spread, really — deserves a dessert table. And, what better to include on that spread than a portable treat that's just the right size for rounding out a night of eating and drinking? Better yet, this recipe marries two fall favorite desserts: pumpkin pie and cheesecake.

There is no dessert more underrated but more beloved than a whoopie pie. A bite-sized (ok, maybe a few bites) pillowy treat, there's something whimsical about whoopie pies — something that reminds us of a simpler time, of childhood, and of grabbing a treat at the cornerstore before you ride your bike home. This recipe takes that sentiment and puts a fall spin on it, pairing everyone's favorite dessert flavor (chocolate) with a delicately-spiced cream cheese filling that's light on the tongue but heavy on the taste.

These cupcakes were inspired by one of our favorite holiday pies. We toasted the pecans and finely ground them into a flour (replacing some all-purpose flour) to make the cupcakes, and we topped the cupcakes off with a brown-butter frosting you'll want to make again and again (it's perfect on banana bread). Store-bought dulce de leche spooned on top is an easy way to bring on pecan pie's gooeyness.

These crunchy pumpkin bars will be the star of any fall potluck party.

Celebrate the sweet-tart goodness of cranberry sauce with vibrant pink cupcakes at your holiday gathering.

These cake pops are kid friendly both to make and to eat. Get the little ones involved in tearing the cake into crumbs and then dipping the finished pops into white chocolate.

Sunny mixes pecans into her pumpkin pies and makes them bite-size crowd-pleasers.