Category: Desserts

Birthday Desserts

Zoë François 1 Comment
Sprinkle cake on a cake stand from Zoë François's cookbook, Zoë Bakes Cakes, one of many perfect birthday desserts!
Sprinkle Cake from my book Zoë Bakes Cakes!

Happy Birthday! If you’re reading this you’re on the hunt for birthday desserts, which means it’s somebody’s birthday. I love choosing birthday treats because you can make anything that the birthday celebrant loves. Sure, you’ll find a bunch of cake recipes below, since it’s the faithful symbol of birthdays, but you don’t have to stick to cakes. You’ll also find some bars and brownies on my list, which are great for parties and offer fun ways to play with flavors. If you are looking for cakes, check out my book, Zoë Bakes Cakes for a comprehensive guide, or find a few of my favorite cake recipes below.

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Vegan Desserts

Zoë François 5 Comments
Vegan Mango Pudding | ZoeBakes by Zoë François
Vegan Mango Mousse: A vegan dessert I didn’t tell my family was vegan. They had no idea!

I will start out by saying that I am not a vegan and therefore I have not experimented much with vegan desserts or substitutions. I do have friends who avoid dairy and/or gluten and/or eggs, so I have dabbled a little bit with vegan swaps, but I am by no means an expert. So, for this post, I asked a friend for a few suggestions as to what vegan blogs she’s had success making baked goods from and what she knows about baking vegan desserts.

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Chocolate Desserts

Zoë François 2 Comments
Hot Chocolate Cake | ZoeBakes by Zoë François
Hot Chocolate Cake

Chocolate desserts: decadent, rich, deep, sweet—there are so many ways to describe them. Chocolate is romantic, dramatic, purported to have healing properties, and is absolutely delicious. The wonderful flavor is representative of devotion and love. Chocolate can come in so many forms that even those who don’t consider themselves chocolate fanatics almost always find a chocolate treat to love. So to all the chocolate lovers’ out there—this list of chocolate desserts is for you.

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Passion Fruit Meringue Cheesecake

Zoë François 2 Comments
Passion Fruit Meringue Cheesecake

This lovely Passion Fruit Meringue Cheesecake is a spin on a recipe from Wild Sweetness by Thalia Ho! It is a beautiful book. A book about baking and desserts, but it’s also about Thalia Ho’s artistic vision of the wild and beautiful world she occupies. I immediately went for her Lemon Meringue cheesecake, because I adore the flavor combination of tart and sweet, the creamy textures of cheesecake and meringue, you all know how I feel about a toasted meringue. I replaced the lemon in her recipe for passion fruit, which is also tart, but has a wonderful perfume quality to it. You can use the pulp with the seeds or strain the seeds out, that is up to you and how you like the texture of the cheesecake. I strained the seeds for the cheesecake itself, but then added a fresh passion fruit to the top for a sour note and texture. You can also find passion fruit puree.

See below for the recipe and a guide to buying passion fruit and puree.

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8 Tasty Blueberry Desserts

Zoë François Leave a comment
A white bowl of fresh blueberries

Blueberries are one of those ingredients that need nothing more than themselves to be special. The color adds natural drama and the sweet-tart flavor is a perfect feature for so many desserts, be it cheesecake, galette, cobbler or bars. I also love that you can have delicious blueberry desserts any time of year because frozen blueberries work so well in many different recipes. I always have them in my freezer, so even if it’s not peak summer, I can pull them out and make something incredible whenever I have a craving for blueberry desserts!

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