Tasty Passover Dessert Recipes
Tasty Passover Dessert Recipes
Celebrating Passover (or Pesach) is ALL about tradition. Whether you’ve been celebrating your whole life, or are new to the Jewish holiday, there are some long-established menu items you must have at your Seder dinner table. Where it starts to get trickier is what to serve for dessert! With restrictions and guidelines have come some of our favorite shows of creativity, and that’s true for these dessert recipes too. Check out our 30 Passover desserts to get inspired for your post-Seder dinner sweets.
If you’re unfamiliar, the term “Passover” refers to the biblical stories of the 10 plagues sent by God to convince the Egyptian pharaoh to “let the Jewish people go”, and the eventual exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. As the story goes, they packed in such a hurry that they didn’t have enough time to even let their bread rise (if you’ve ever made homemade bread, you can imagine), and only were able to bring unleavened, cracker-like bread called matzah with them. To celebrate this exodus, Jewish people today continue to remove chametz from their diets (and their homes, for some strict households) for the duration of Passover, as well as make sure all other ingredients they’re using are specified Kosher for Passover. Simply put, chametz is basically any flour product like bread, cereal, cake, cookies, pasta, etc. In addition, they must continue to follow general Kosher rules (meat and dairy can’t be eaten in the same meal, though fish and eggs are considered neutral, or pareve; no pork products; etc.) This isn’t too terribly difficult to manage when it comes to main dishes and sides, but dessert can be a whole other story.
Here we’ve included some fun ideas for desserts to make with matzo (toffee! icebox cake!), as well as other traditional Passover desserts, like coconut macaroons and meringues. We’ve also got a flourless chocolate cake, plus a peanut butter version (if you allow kitniyot, or legumes, during Passover) and a salted chocolate coconut version. They’re so good, you’re going to want to make them year round.
You’ll note a number of desserts we’ve included are vegan, like our vegan cheesecake or coconut ice cream—because they don’t contain real milk, you’re in the clear for eating them even after a meat-heavy dinner. You won’t even miss the dairy, we promise!
This time of year, we love making extra sweet treats to share with our friends and families. Everyone loves being gifted cookies, like our walnut snowballs or snickerdoodle shortbread, or barks, like our sweet ‘n salty chocolate bark or almond toffee. Just be mindful of how strict your gift receiver is about Passover guidelines—when in doubt, buy Kosher for Passover ingredients.
If baking seems too stressful, check out our list of our favorite store-bought Passover desserts too.
An impressive dessert is the perfect way to round out your Passover Seder. Here, we've gathered a collection of recipes that are delicious and can be easily tailored to accommodate any dietary restrictions you observe for the holiday. Pareve margarine can be swapped in for butter in desserts such as this Mixed Berry Crisp with Matzo Streusel (try topping it with dairy-free ice cream, too!), and this Pineapple-Coconut Soft Serve contains no dairy at all. If you avoid eating kitniyot—an ingredient category that includes foods such as rice and seeds, like poppy seeds and sunflower seeds—you'll find several dessert options to suit the holiday, too. From a two-ingredient sorbet to dairy-free and gluten-free Orange Torta, these treats go beyond the usual macaroons (although we couldn't resist Molly Yeh's Matcha Coconut Macaroons). Read on for all 12 recipes, and start planning your Seder now.
