Sweet Leftovers: Birthday Cake Bread Pudding Recipe for Serious Eats

When you have over 30 birthday cakes, you've got to do something with the leftovers. And you can only eat so much Birthday Cake French Toast.

Having found myself in such a situation following my recent 30th birthday party, I decided to get creative with the leftovers. Naturally, on the list was employing a trusted bread pudding recipe, but swapping leftover birthday cake for the called-for carbohydrate.

This makes for a deliciously buttery, buttercream-studded variety of bread pudding, soft and sweet in the middle, and punctuated by sweet, crunchy bits of frosting on top, which reached a semi-caramelized state during the baking process. Happy post-birthday, indeed.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Gad-Zukes: Zucchini White Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe for Serious Eats

August is prime time for zucchini. And such proliferation means that means that after you're done making healthy summer pastas, salads, grilled vegetables and wholesome stir-fry dishes, you'll still have plenty left over to make dessert.

You could make zucchini bread, or even better, zucchini cake—but for a lighter bite with a zingy citrus burst, why not try White Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies? These drop cookies are simple to make, and offer a sweet summery variation on the usual chocolate chip cookie. Many zucchini-based sweets call for shredded zucchini, but for this recipe, I prefer to dice and lightly sauté it in brown sugar and butter. The zucchini absorbs the sweet, rich flavor of the sugar and butter, adding moist, chewy flavor bursts throughout the cookie, which are gorgeously complemented by sweet white chocolate.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Sweetness Overload: Banana Split S'more Whoopie Pies Recipe for Serious Eats

In case you didn't already know it, August 10th is both National S'more Day andNational Banana Split Day.

And in celebration of this momentous day, here's a dessert mash-up which allows you to go above and beyond your civic pastry eating duty: the Banana Split S'more Whoopie Pie. It combines all of the key flavor points of both the banana split and s'mores, but the delivery is a bit of a curveball: cakey banana-marshmallow cookies are lined with chocolate before sandwiching ice cream flecked with graham cracker bits.

Just more proof that if some is good, s'more is better.

Note: Don't like the idea of cold cookies? For an easy variation, sandwich toasted marshmallows or marshmallow fluff between the sandwiches instead of ice cream for a treat that doesn't have to be chilled.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Good Eatin': Eton Mess Recipe for Serious Eats

Eton Mess. Its name suggests disarray, but rest assured, the delicious factor with this chilled dessert is in very good order.

Sort of like the love child of Pavlova and Trifle, this confection, consisting of crushed meringue cookies, freshly whipped cream and sugar-coated berries (usually strawberries) takes its name from the venerable Eton College, where it is traditionally served at the school's annual cricket game against Winchester College.

It's wonderfully easy to prepare, and is very open to improvisation: not mad for meringues? Try it with ladyfingers or crushed Nilla wafers instead. Not starry-eyed for strawberries? Substitute blackberries, blueberries, or a mix of your favorite fruits in equal quantities.

Note: I got the charming idea of serving this sweet treat in half-pint mason jars from a restaurant in Seattle called Smith, where chef Chris Howell serves Eton Mess in this method, using a rotating roster of fresh berries.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Biscuit Time: Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls Recipe for Serious Eats

What happens when you combine biscuits with cinnamon rolls?

A few things, as I discovered when I recently came across something called the Biscuit Cinnamon Roll at the Denver Biscuit Company. On a technical level, the combination yields a biscuity, dense and substantial roll with a deliciously crisped edge and gooey, sweet interior. But if you want to get poetic about it (and you just might), by melding these two twin titans of carbohydrate awesomeness, you've got a decadently delicious and addictive tour de force that just might change the way you look at morning sweets forever.

Here's my homemade re-creation of this Denver delicacy.

Note: The biscuit portion of the recipe is adapted from The New York Times.

Find the full entry and recipe on Serious Eats!

Fortune Teller: Homemade Fortune Cookies Recipe for Serious Eats

Fortune cookies are so bossy, always telling you what the future holds, often in a weird and enigmatic way. But with National Fortune Cookie Day being July 20 (sorry I'm late), there's a sweeter option. Choose your own destiny by baking your own fortune cookies: this way, you can stuff them with any kind of fortunes you want. And as a bonus, they're surprisingly easy and quick to bake, and the lightly sweet, vanilla-scented homemade version tastes vastly superior to commercial varieties.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Hop to It: Grasshopper Pie in a Brownie Crust Recipe for Serious Eats

Comprised of a boozy, creamy mint filling in a chocolate cookie pie crust, Grasshopper Pie is a deliciously refreshing summertime dessert.

But when you swap out the chocolate cookie crust for a crumbled brownie crust, you've got something even more amazing. When you pour the hot filling onto the rich brownie crust, they meld together beautifully when chilled. If you serve it with a big scoop of ice cream on top (not excessive at all) it verges into brownie sundae territory, in the best way possible.

For the full writeup and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Sweet Chill: Cannoli Ice Cream Recipe for Serious Eats

Everybody knows that the best part of the cannoli is the cream. But what happens when you take that delicious filling and combine it with ice cream?

What you've got on your hands is an ice dream, that's what. This is an adaptation of a recipe from the brilliant book All American Desserts by Judith Fertig, wherein high-quality vanilla ice cream is doctored up with the makings of cannoli cream. The result is a memorable frozen treat: rich with ricotta, spices, and flecked with bits of candied fruit and chocolate chips. It's the best of two creamy worlds.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Ooey Gooey: Chocolate Gooey Butter Cake Recipe for Serious Eats

Gooey Butter Cake: there is no part of these three beautiful words that is wrong. This cake, which is actually more like a two-part bar cookie, is the pride of St. Louis, MO, a cake steeped in legend and even a little controversy.

It is also unique in that recipes almost always call for a cake mix, and many will argue that this is the "traditional" method of preparation—and yields the best end result.

This version twists the tradition slightly, using a chocolate cake mix instead of the usual yellow, and employs cocoa in the filling. The result is an addictively sweet variation on this rich regional treasure.

For the recipe, visit Serious Eats!

Fromage et Chocolat: Chocolate-Covered Cheetos Recipe for Serious Eats

Believe it or not, this was not my idea.

This nugget of sugar-coated tastiness came from Becky Selengut, author of Good Fish (and arguably Bad Seed, or at least enabler of Bad Ideas), who made a compelling suggestion to the world via Twitter: "Chocolate covered fritos. Go. Make. Sell. Widely."

Well, naturally I knew this confection was my destiny, but I took it one step further, testing out the idea on several chips, including two types of Doritos, Fritos, Lay's Potato Chips, and Cheetos.

To be honest, the original chips were probably the biggest crowd-pleaser, but theCheetos were certainly the most compelling—vaguely shrimplike in shape, these nubbly, crunchy, chocolate-and-cheese snacks were oddly addictive in a sweet-and-salty, lowbrow sort of way; if you enjoyed Velveeta Fudge, you might want to give this one a try.

For the full entry and recipe, visit Serious Eats!