Martha's 29 All-Time Favorite Dessert Recipes (2024)

8 of Martha's All-Time Best Baking Tips, According to Our Readers

Alexis's Brown-Sugar Chocolate-Chip Cookies

This beloved recipe comes from Martha's daughter, Alexis. The batter produces very flat and crisp chocolate-chip cookies. Use an ice-cream scoop to ensure even baking and uniform size and remember that they spread wide on the pan during baking.

Old-Fashioned Lemon Sugar Cookies

A classic lemony flavor; a chewy texture; and glistening, crackly tops created with a double sprinkling of sanding sugar-these large cookies have it all.

Fireworks Cookies

Martha likes the beautiful drawn icing decoration on these red, white, and blue cookies.

Sable Cookies

These delicate, crumbly cookies hail from the Normandy region of France and are delicious plain, dipped in dark chocolate, or sandwiched with jam. Once you have a handle on the basic recipe, try adding almonds, orange zest, or other flavorings. This recipe is adapted from Martha's book Entertaining.

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Fudgy Brownies

Doesn't everyone love a brownie? And Martha likes hers fudgy rather than cakey.

Brown-Butter Toffee Blondies

This is a wonderful variaton on the blondie, the brown butter gives an extra-rich toffee flavor. We used card-suit cookie cutters to shape the blondies into hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades.

Creamy Lemon Bars

Light and brightly flavored, this classic bar cookie is one of Martha's all-time favorites.

Classic Crepes

This recipe can be used as the basis for any crepe creation. (The buckwheat variation has a heartier texture and a more robust flavor and is best paired with savory fillings.)

Red Velvet Cupcakes

With its distinctive look, this popular cupcake is a top contender for favorite flavor.

Classic Cheesecake

A crumbly graham-cracker crust and silky cream-cheese filling make this New York-style cheesecake a winner.

White Layer Cake With Lemon Curd Filling

These light, tender layers, made from the ultimate white cake recipe, are interspersed with tart lemon curd and surrounded by fluffy clouds of meringue-based peaks of Seven-Minute Frosting.

Coconut Layer Cake

A towering creation of tender sour-cream cake, coconut filling, and piles of fluffy frosting, this dessert is the last word in coconut.

Carrot-Ginger Layer Cake With Orange Cream-Cheese Frosting

More sophisticated than the average carrot cake, this tall layered confection is altogether irresistible.

Edward Kostyra's Birthday Cake

This orange-curd-filled cake topped with Mrs. Milman's chocolate frosting was Martha's father's favorite. Make it as a birthday treat for someone special in your life.

Classic Angel Food Cake

Martha's favorite angel food cake is served with an elderflower syrup. You'll need to plan ahead to make it: Allow at least two days for the elderflower syrup to sit at room temperature before starting the cake.

Devil's Food Cake With Milk Chocolate Frosting

This devilishly delicious all-occasion cake recipe was adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, and the frosting recipe is courtesy of Matt Lewis of Baked.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

It is delicious unembellished, but you could also try this pound cake dusted with confectioners' sugar and topped with a berry compote or poached peaches and whipped cream. Chef David Waltuck shared the recipe for this rich cake with Martha.

Mile-High Apple Pie

Flaky pâte brisée pastry encases three different kinds of apples in this favorite pie. Martha says this dessert tastes even better the day after it has been baked.

Mile-High Lemon Pie

A whimsical pie that sets the bar high for taste and appearance: It has a zesty lemon filling, a flaky pâte brisée base, and a glossy Swiss meringue crown.

New York Crumb Cake

Martha got this recipe for New York Crumb Cake from her friend Sara Foster, owner of Foster's Market in Durham, North Carolina.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler

Fresh peaches and blueberries are baked beneath a fluffy layer of vanilla-cream biscuits. The tops are brushed with heavy cream and sprinkled with sanding sugar for a crispy-sweet crunch.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

The crumb "topping" on this beautiful cake actually ends up on the bottom. Each bite has a surprisingly crunchy texture.

Pear Brown Bettys

A Betty is a spiced fruit dessert with buttered breadcrumbs or a cake-crumb topping that turns golden brown as it cooks. Martha's individual Bettys have two layers of Bartlett pears. In between and on top is a blend of torn sourdough bread, butter, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of apple cider.

Blueberry Crumble

A crumble is a blend of berries or other fruit with a textured sugary topping. The blueberry filling gets thick from added cornstarch. This is perfect with vanilla ice cream, the ultimate summer dessert.

Martha's Peach Buckle

A buckle is a decadent dessert hybrid of cake and cobbler together. Thin peach slices are covered with a soft dough that bakes into a delicious crust. Serve with whipped cream.

Apple Pandowdy

Usually sweetened with brown sugar or molasses, a pandowdy is a fruit dessert that's closely related to a pie though without the bottom crust. In this version, the pie crust is cut up (rather than broken partway through) and arranged over the apples for baking.

Berry Grunt

A classic grunt is a dumpling-topped fruit dessert that's cooked on the stove; it is often called a slump. Martha's grunt has blackberries and raspberries that are simmered together. Then dollops of ginger-spiked dumpling batter are added to the pan, to steam in berry juice. Give everyone a dumpling and a splash of heavy cream.

Strawberry Shortcake

Like most of us, Martha adores strawberry shortcake. The combination of sugared fresh fruit, sweet biscuit, and whipped cream makes for a delightful jumble of contrasting tastes, textures, and flavors in every spoonful.

Sour-Cherry Pistachio Crisp

A crisp is a baked concoction of sweetened fruit with a crumbly topping. This favorite version from Martha has more than a pound and a half of pitted sour cherries. The topping includes oats, pistachios, and the traditional brown sugar, butter, and flour. The result is a fruit dessert that's tangy, sugary, and has lots of crunch.