✔ Updated · 55 classics: custards, pastries, tarts, cakes + cookies
Crisp caramel tops, buttery layers, clouds of cream: French desserts are the reason I fell in love with pastry. Here are 55 of the best, from easy weeknight treats to bakery showstoppers.
The most famous French desserts are crème brûlée, macarons, tarte Tatin, éclairs, profiteroles, madeleines, chocolate mousse, mille-feuille, crêpes and canelés. Easiest to make at home: yogurt cake, chocolate mousse, cherry clafoutis, crêpes and palmiers. Most are built on a few basics: butter, eggs, sugar, cream and good technique.
- Custards: crème brûlée, crème caramel, pots de crème.
- Pastries: éclairs, Paris-Brest, mille-feuille, croissants.
- Tarts: tarte Tatin, tarte au citron, fruit tarts.
- Easiest: yogurt cake, clafoutis, crêpes, mousse.
French Custards and Creamy Desserts
1. Crème Brûlée
Silky vanilla custard under a thin sheet of torched caramelized sugar. That first crack of the spoon never gets old.
2. Crème Caramel
A wobbly baked custard turned out of its mold, bathed in its own amber caramel sauce. Lighter than crème brûlée.
3. Pots de Crème
Little pots of rich baked chocolate or vanilla custard, smooth as velvet. Make them a day ahead for dinner parties.
4. Mousse au Chocolat
Airy, deeply chocolatey mousse made from melted dark chocolate, eggs and whipped cream or whipped egg whites.
5. Île Flottante (Floating Island)
Soft poached meringue clouds floating on cool vanilla custard sauce, drizzled with crackly caramel.
6. Flan Parisien
A firm, sliceable vanilla custard baked in a pastry crust. The everyday treat of Paris bakeries.
7. Riz au Lait
Creamy French rice pudding slowly simmered in vanilla milk. Serve warm or cold, with caramel or jam.
8. Café Liégeois
Chilled coffee poured over coffee ice cream and crowned with whipped cream. Half dessert, half drink.
Choux and Flaky Pastries
9. Cream Puffs (Choux à la Crème)
Light, hollow choux pastry shells filled with pastry cream or whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar.
10. Profiteroles
Choux puffs stuffed with vanilla ice cream and drowned in warm chocolate sauce. A bistro classic.
11. Éclairs
Long choux pastries filled with chocolate or coffee pastry cream and topped with a glossy glaze.
12. Paris-Brest
A ring of choux pastry sliced and piped full of praline cream, topped with toasted almonds. Named after a bike race.
13. Saint-Honoré
Puff pastry base crowned with caramel-dipped cream puffs and swirls of light cream. A patisserie showstopper.
14. Religieuse
Two stacked chocolate- or coffee-filled cream puffs, glazed and piped with buttercream to look like a little nun.
15. Croquembouche
A tall tower of cream puffs held together with caramel threads, the traditional French wedding cake.
16. Chouquettes
Bite-size choux puffs studded with pearl sugar, no filling needed. French kids grab them by the bagful.
17. Mille-Feuille
Layers of crisp puff pastry and vanilla pastry cream, finished with feathered icing. Messy to eat, worth it.
18. Pain au Chocolat
Buttery, flaky croissant dough rolled around sticks of dark chocolate. Breakfast in France, dessert anywhere.
19. Kouign-Amann
A Breton pastry of laminated dough, butter and sugar baked until the outside turns to crunchy caramel.
20. Palmiers
Puff pastry and sugar rolled into heart or leaf shapes and baked crisp and caramelized. Just two ingredients.
21. Beignets
Puffy fried dough pillows buried in powdered sugar, a French tradition carried to New Orleans.
French Tarts
22. Tarte Tatin
Upside-down apple tart: apples cooked in butter caramel, topped with pastry, baked, then flipped. Serve with crème fraîche.
23. Tarte au Citron
Crisp sweet pastry filled with a tangy, silky lemon curd. Often topped with toasted meringue.
24. Tarte aux Fraises
A buttery tart shell with vanilla pastry cream and rows of glossy fresh strawberries. Pure early-summer joy.
25. Tarte Bourdaloue
Poached pear halves baked into almond frangipane in a sweet crust. Elegant but surprisingly simple.
26. French Fig Tart
Ripe figs fanned over almond cream in a crisp shell, baked until jammy. A late-summer stunner.
27. Rustic Apple Galette
Free-form pastry folded around sliced apples and cinnamon sugar. No tart pan, no stress, still gorgeous.
28. Galette des Rois
Puff pastry filled with almond cream, eaten on Epiphany. Whoever finds the hidden fève is king for the day.
French Cakes
29. Gâteau au Yaourt (Yogurt Cake)
The cake French kids learn first, measured using the yogurt pot. Moist, simple and endlessly adaptable.
30. Fondant au Chocolat
Chocolate cake with a molten, gooey center. Underbake it slightly so the middle stays lava-soft.
31. Gâteau Basque
A tender, buttery cake from the Basque Country, filled with pastry cream or black cherry jam.
32. Opéra Cake
Thin almond sponge layers soaked in coffee syrup, stacked with coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache.
33. Fraisier
Sponge cake filled with halved strawberries and light mousseline cream, so the berries show around the sides.
34. Quatre-Quarts
The Breton pound cake: equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. Golden, buttery and perfect with tea.
35. Bûche de Noël
The Christmas yule log: rolled sponge with chocolate cream, decorated to look like a tree branch.
36. Charlotte aux Fraises
Ladyfingers lining a mold filled with strawberry mousse or bavarois, chilled until sliceable.
37. Far Breton
A dense, custardy flan-cake from Brittany, traditionally studded with prunes or raisins.
Little Cakes and Cookies
38. Madeleines
Shell-shaped little sponge cakes with a buttery crumb and that signature hump. Best eaten warm from the pan.
39. Financiers
Small almond cakes made with brown butter and egg whites, crisp at the edges and moist inside.
40. Macarons
Delicate almond meringue cookies sandwiched with ganache, buttercream or jam. Tricky, but so satisfying to master.
41. Canelés
Bordeaux's little fluted cakes with a dark caramelized crust and a custardy, vanilla-rum center.
42. Palets de Dames
Soft, round butter cookies topped with a thin sugar glaze, a specialty of Lille.
43. Sablés Bretons
Crumbly, salted-butter shortbread from Brittany. The salt makes the butter flavor sing.
44. Meringues
Crisp-shelled, marshmallowy-centered whipped egg white and sugar cookies. Bake low and slow.
Fruit Desserts, Crêpes and Soufflés
45. Cherry Clafoutis
Fresh cherries baked in a thick, custardy batter and dusted with powdered sugar. A Limousin classic.
46. Flaugnarde
Clafoutis' cousin, made with apples, pears, plums or berries instead of cherries.
47. Poires Belle-Hélène
Vanilla-poached pears served with vanilla ice cream and warm chocolate sauce.
48. Sweet Crêpes
Thin, lacy pancakes filled with sugar and lemon, jam, or chocolate-hazelnut spread.
49. Crêpes Suzette
Crêpes warmed in a buttery orange-caramel sauce and flambéed with orange liqueur. Adults-only unless you swap in orange juice.
50. Chocolate Soufflé
A puffed, airy chocolate dessert served straight from the oven before it sinks. Dramatic and easier than it looks.
51. Pain Perdu
French toast's original form: day-old bread soaked in sweet custard, fried in butter and served with fruit.
French Sweets and Confections
52. French Chocolate Truffles
Rich ganache rolled into balls and dusted with cocoa. Just a few ingredients and no oven.
53. Mendiants
Discs of dark chocolate topped with dried fruit and nuts, a traditional French Christmas treat.
54. Nougat de Montélimar
Chewy white nougat made with honey, whipped egg whites, almonds and pistachios.
55. Calissons d'Aix
Provence's diamond-shaped sweets of almond and candied melon paste under a crisp royal icing top.
Easy French Desserts for Beginners
Start with the desserts that forgive you: yogurt cake, chocolate mousse, cherry clafoutis, crêpes, palmiers and chocolate truffles. None needs special equipment, and all of them taste far fancier than the effort.
Save choux pastry, macarons and mille-feuille for a slow weekend. They are not hard, just precise, so weigh your ingredients and read the whole recipe before you start.
My French Dessert Tips
- Use a kitchen scale. French pastry is written in grams for a reason, and weighing is the trick that makes it reliable.
- Real butter only. In a quatre-quarts or a sablé, the butter is the flavor, so this is not the place to swap.
- Clafoutis was my mum's go-to company dessert: fruit in a dish, batter poured over, into the oven while dinner happens. Warm and puffed, it makes everyone go quiet.
- Chill custards fully. Crème brûlée and pots de crème need at least 4 hours in the fridge before they set properly.
- Recipes with raw or lightly cooked eggs, like some chocolate mousses, are safest made with pasteurized eggs, especially for kids, older adults or anyone pregnant.
More Desserts from Around the World
Love touring the world by dessert? Try our Spanish desserts, traditional Irish desserts, Russian desserts and easy Jewish desserts. For a cozy brunch take on pain perdu, make our copycat Cracker Barrel French toast, and for a grown-up mousse, try Baileys chocolate mousse.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most famous French dessert?
Crème brûlée is probably the most famous, alongside macarons, tarte Tatin, éclairs and croissants. Each is served all over France and copied in bakeries worldwide, and each shows off French pastry basics: custard, caramel, butter and careful technique.
What are easy French desserts to make at home?
Gâteau au yaourt (yogurt cake), chocolate mousse, cherry clafoutis, sweet crêpes, palmiers and chocolate truffles are all beginner-friendly. They use pantry ingredients, need no special molds and come together in under an hour of hands-on time.
What is a traditional French dessert for Christmas?
The bûche de Noël, a rolled sponge decorated like a yule log, is the classic French Christmas dessert. In Provence, families serve the thirteen desserts, which include nougat, calissons, dried fruit and nuts, and early January brings the galette des rois.
What is the difference between crème brûlée and crème caramel?
Both are baked vanilla custards. Crème brûlée is richer, made mostly with cream, and gets a crisp torched sugar top. Crème caramel uses more milk, is baked over liquid caramel and turned out of its mold, so it is lighter and sits in sauce.
What French dessert is shaped like a shell?
That is the madeleine, a small sponge cake baked in a shell-shaped pan. Madeleines come from the Lorraine region and are known for the little hump on top, which forms when chilled batter hits a hot oven.
