12 Delightful Passover Desserts to Impress Everyone at Your Seder

For some home cooks, whipping up a homemade dessert that's delicious and Passover-appropriate sounds too daunting even to attempt. While there's certainly nothing wrong with going store-bought, that's not your only option. Below, we've gathered 12 of our favorite Passover-friendly sweets—including coconut macaroons, flourless chocolate cake, and a light and fluffy angel food cake—that will impress everyone at your seder.

A note about the recipes that follow: Though some were designed with Passover in mind, others are meant to be more all-purpose, which means some of them contain ingredients not considered kosher for Passover—or, at least, not considered by everyone to be such. Ordinary vanilla extract and vanilla paste are not considered kosher for Passover; you may substitute a kosher vanilla extract or the scraped beans from a vanilla pod. As dietary restrictions and traditions vary widely, we've chosen here to offer a range of recipes to meet a range of preferences, with the hope that everyone will be able to find a dish that they love.

Chocolate Mousse

Rich with bittersweet flavor and light as a cloud, chocolate mousse is a simple, elegant dessert that’s deeply satisfying to eat. And because it has to made ahead of time, it's the ideal dessert for entertaining.

Double-Caramel Flan

This gorgeous custard is chock-full of caramel, while a higher-than-usual ratio of egg yolks and cream makes it pleasantly rich. Tempering the eggs before combining them with the caramel, cream, and milk ensures that they incorporate smoothly.

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons

In our version of the classic Passover dessert, we toast unsweetened coconut flakes to deepen their color and flavor. For subtle vanilla and almond flavors, this recipe calls for vanilla paste and nut liqueur instead of the typical extracts; substitute kosher vanilla extract or vanilla beans if necessary to keep the macaroons kosher.

Honey-Vanilla Almond Cake

Ground whole almonds or store-bought almond meal serves as a flavorful stand-in for wheat flour in this pretty cake. The dessert gets its airy texture from whipped egg whites, and little acid in the form of lemon juice helps stabilize the whites before they're mixed into the batter. This recipe calls for butter to grease the pan, but you could easily swap it out for oil to make this a parve dessert.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

This flourless chocolate cake is rich and pleasantly bittersweet, with crisp edges and a fudgy interior that comes from folding melted chocolate into a mixture of whole eggs and sugar that have been whipped until thick and pale. (To make this cake truly flourless, skip the baking spray with flour. Grease the cake pan by brushing it with softened butter, dusting it with cornstarch or your gluten-free flour blend of choice, then shaking out the excess.)

The Ultimate Gluten-Free Angel Food Cake

This cake is phenomenally light and fluffy, thanks to a blend of gluten-free flours and whipped egg whites. Combining egg whites and sugar all at once creates a dense but stable meringue, and whisking it in stages creates a fine network of air cells for a delicate crumb.

Chocolate-Meringue Cookies

Chocolate lovers will love these light little meringue cookies, which put the bittersweet flavor of high-quality dark chocolate front and center. Making the meringue itself constitutes the lion's share of the work here, and even that isn't as tough as you might think it is.

Earl Grey and Vanilla Poached Pears

For the simplest dessert, poach your pears in a fragrant mixture of Earl Grey tea and vanilla. This dish is subtly sweet with a delicate floral flavor—plus, it comes together in one pot and requires just about 30 minutes to make.

Meyer Lemon Ice Cream

Brighten up your Passover table with this zesty Meyer lemon ice cream, which is packed with fresh Meyer lemon juice and zest, along with a dash of citrus liqueur. Note that this recipe contains a small amount of cornstarch, which some may want to avoid during Passover.

Tishpishti (Sephardic Jewish Nut Cake)

Our version of this festive dessert features grated apple—which tenderizes what might otherwise be a heavy cake—and a heady mix of spices and citrus. A final soak in apple brandy–ginger syrup infuses it with a subtle spice and sweetness.

Creamy Whipped Greek Yogurt

Looking for a tasty dairy dessert that's about as easy as it gets? Whipping Greek yogurt using a stand mixer may sound a little too simple, but the texture it takes on—like a hybrid of thick yogurt and fluffy whipped cream—makes it an extremely luxurious dessert, especially when layered with fresh or roasted fruit. Heavy cream thickens the yogurt, a touch of honey lends gentle sweetness, and rosewater or vanilla bean gives it a floral note.

Mango Sorbet

Sweet, buttery Ataúlfo mangoes are in season this time of year, so Passover is the ideal occasion to make a batch of this simple yet devastatingly good sorbet—all it takes is mangoes, lime juice, sugar, and a little salt. Thanks to the high ratio of fruit to water, the sorbet churns up extremely rich and creamy, with a beautiful deep-golden color.