I don’t know why, but French desserts recipes have a reputation for being fussy. Yes, there’s some piping involved. And sometimes your choux puffs won’t rise, because you got too eager to see how they looked and opened the oven door halfway through. But if you’ve got a bit of patience and some basic baking tools like a sturdy wooden rolling pin, tart rings, mixing bowl and a baking mat (which will help you a lot!) and you take it slowly and follow the steps, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Most of these recipes easy French desserts recipes.
The truth is, loads of the classics started life as home cooking. They started as common French desserts, some batter poured over fruit, some stale bread brought back to life with a soak in egg. Apples baked down into something you can slice and have with your coffee. And once you’ve got a couple of basics under your belt, a good sweet shortcrust pastry and a batch of frangipane, half these puddings are already within reach.
So that’s what this collection is. French dessert recipes we actually make and eat, sorted into four groups so you can find what you’re after: tarts, custards and creams, cakes, and pastries. Some take twenty minutes. A couple are a proper afternoon’s work, and I’ve been honest about which is which.
Have a scroll to see this french dessert list. If you’ve never made a French pudding before, start with a clafoutis, it’s about as forgiving as baking gets. Then work your way up to a Paris-Brest when you’re feeling brave.
French Tarts
There’s a French tart for every mood, and most of them are pretty easy. The idea underneath is dead simple, and that’s the joy of them. You start with a base, then you pick a fruit and a cream and mix and match until you’ve got something you love. Maybe it’s a sharp lemon under a soft cloud of meringue, or maybe you’re more wild blueberries piled on crisp, sweet shortcrust. There’s a French tart for every craving going, and once you’ve made one, you’ll already be planning the next.
1
Frangipane Pear Tart
Pear halves fanned over almond cream in a crisp pâte sablée shell, glazed golden and scattered with toasted almonds. The pears are tender and fragrant, the almond cream is soft in the middle, and the pastry shatters when you cut through it!
Crisp, buttery pâte brisée cases filled with a silky citrus cream. Sharp and bright at first, then settling into something soft, mellow, and almost custardy underneath. Rich and refreshing at the same time, with the pastry adding a sandy crunch!
Apples cooked low and slow in butter and sugar until deeply caramelised, covered with puff pastry and baked, then flipped upside down! The apples are soft and almost jammy, intensely sweet with a slight bitter edge from the caramel. Serve warm with crème fraîche.
Wild blueberries baked in a buttery pâte sablée until they collapse into a deep purple, jammy layer. Bright, sweet, and lightly floral, with a crumbly pastry that shatters when you cut through it. This is the seasonal tart from the Limousin region.
Buttery pastry, soft almond cream, and red plums baked until they're sweet and slightly jammy. The frangipane puffs up around the fruit, going golden at the edges. Dust it with icing sugar and you've got a proper French tart to make in late summer when plums are everywhere.
Crisp, buttery sweet shortcrust pastry filled with a sharp, silky lemon curd, topped with glossy, soft and light Swiss meringue torched until golden. It's sharp, sweet, and rich all at once!
Fresh, ripe strawberries arranged over a light, vanilla-scented diplomat cream in a crisp, buttery sweet shortcrust pastry shell. The cream is somewhere between a custard and a mousse, rich but not heavy. The perfect summer dessert!
French custards are the puddings you make when you fancy slowing down a bit. Think cracking through the amber top of a crème brûlée into cold, silky vanilla underneath. Or a chocolate mousse so dark and airy it just melts on your tongue. They’re all built on with the same easy ingredients, some eggs, cream, and a little patience. So they are really far less difficult than you think. These classic french puddings are perfect as individual portions for when you have guests over!
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Crème Brûlée
Silky vanilla custard under a thin, crackly caramelised sugar crust. Rich and creamy with a delicate vanilla flavor, this classic French dessert feels indulgent yet light. The perfect elegant finish to any meal!
Dark chocolate mousse made with 70% cocoa, whipped egg whites and butter. Rich and deeply chocolatey. It’s creamy, airy, and melting on the tongue, like a cloud of chocolate rather than a heavy pudding, with that airy foam structure that makes it disappear faster than it took to make!
Light poached meringue floating on vanilla custard, topped with toasted almonds. The meringue melts on your tongue, the custard is silk, and the almonds shatters into nutty pieces. This classic desserts is elegant and light!
Fresh strawberries layered with a rich and lightly sweet vanilla mascarpone cream and crushed Breton shortbread. The strawberries are sharp and juicy, and the shortbread at the bottom stays just crisp enough to give texture against both. The perfect summer dessert!
Smooth, wobbly baked custard with a layer of amber caramel on top. Delicate and silky, infused with vanilla, and impossibly simple to make with just four ingredients. This is a French dessert that adults love just as much as children do!
French cakes are the ones you end up eating standing at the counter before they’ve even cooled properly. I know me and my husband are both guilty of that. They are often easy french desserts to make. There’s warm madeleines, soft in the middle with a crisp shell edge, and financiers gone golden and nutty from the brown butter, and canelés with that dark, chewy crust round a soft custard centre. Most come together in minutes, too, and they’re brilliant with a nice brew of coffee.
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Madeleines
Small shell-shaped butter cakes with caramelised, slightly crisp edges and a centre that stays soft and spongy, tasting intensely of butter with just enough lemon to keep it light. The perfect afternoon treat!
Small buttery almond cakes that are crispy and golden at the edges and soft, moist and tender in the centre. The flavour is nutty and lightly sweet, with the brown butter adding extra depth to every bite!
Small fluted cakes with a caramelised crust giving way to a soft, barely set custardy centre scented with vanilla and rum. The outside tastes of dark sugar and warmth, while the inside is tender and almost flan-like. They take patience, but they are worth every bit of it!
Tissue-thin apple slices bound together with just enough custardy batter to hold them in place, baked until the edges caramelize and turn golden. The apples taste concentrated and slightly caramelized, the batter adds richness without weighing things down, and the texture is somewhere between a tarte aux pommes and a clafoutis. It's delicate, buttery, not too sweet, with that pure apple flavor coming through in every bite. Completely delicious.
Two layers of puff pastry filled with frangipane and baked until golden and crisp on the outside, soft and almondy within. Somewhere inside is a hidden fève, whoever finds it wears the crown! France takes this very seriously every January.
A batter somewhere between a crêpe and a custard, poured over blueberries and baked until just set and slightly wobbly in the middle. Soft, eggy, and flan-like inside, with fruit through every slice. This is the blueberry version!
A loaf cake packed with rum-soaked dried fruits and toasted nuts, with a golden crust and a dense, moist crumb that gets better every day. Once cooled, it keeps for several weeks in a tin box. That is, if you can stop eating it long enough to find out!
Jammy blueberries sandwiched between two thick, golden pancakes. Soft and eggy in the middle, crisp and buttery at the edges. This traditional Auvergne pancake is gently sweet and denser than a crêpe, almost like a cake!
This rich, custardy bread fried to golden perfection, crisp on the outside and meltingly soft inside is called "Pain Perdu", or "lost bread,". It transforms day-old bread into a luxurious breakfast or brunch treat with creamy eggs, a hint of vanilla, and if you dare a drop of Armagnac!
A large golden crumbly, sandy, with crispy edges, a slightly tender centre. This is the traditional French butter biscuit from Poitou. Traditionally, this cookie gets punched at the table rather than sliced!
Delicate crêpes soaked in a buttery orange and Grand Marnier sauce until glossy and fragrant, then flambéed at the table. Rich, citrusy, and just sweet enough. The sauce does everything and the crêpes absorb every bit of it!
I know French pastries seem like the hard end of baking, but honestly they’re far easier than they look. Take chouquettes for example are dead simple, and once you’ve cracked that one, you’ve basically got profiteroles, the base for éclairs and a Paris-Brest, too! So don’t worry. Just start there, and the rest will feel a lot less intimidating, I promise.
As for the creams that go inside, there’s a few to pick from, but they become second nature soon enough. All it takes is a bit of practice and repetition. Do that, and before long you’ll be turning out choux without so much as a glance at the recipe.
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Meringues
Big, cloud-white meringues that shatters and dissolve into something sweet on your tongue. Crisp all the way through, light as air, with that faint chew right at the centre!
Light-as-air choux pastry baked until it puffs up and goes crisp and hollow, then filled with cold, silky vanilla-scented crème pâtissière and dipped in glossy dark chocolate. This is a classic!
A ring of crisp choux pastry scattered with toasted almonds filled with silky smooth and rich praline mousseline cream. The contrast between the two is what makes this a French pâtisserie classic!
Small, golden almond biscuits with a soft, almost chewy centre. The Limousin cousin of the famous macaron, light, sweet, fragrant, and lightly crisp on the outside. The batter takes minutes to make and the baking smells extraordinary!
Delightful little French cream puffs, filled with fresh whipped cream and drizzled with warm chocolate ganache. With their crispy shell giving way to a luscious, creamy centre, these bite-sized treats are the perfect indulgence for any occasion!
Light, hollow choux puffs with a crispy golden shell, a soft airy centre, and a generous coating of crunchy pearl sugar that shatters when you bite in. Chouquettes are one of the simplest things in French pâtisserie and warm from the oven, they are genuinely impossible to stop eating.
Clafoutis, no contest. You whisk up a batter, pour it over blueberries in a dish, and bake. There is no pastry, no piping, and nothing much to go wrong. Pain perdu (French eggy bread) is just as forgiving, and it uses up stale bread while you’re at it. Both are French desserts recipes you can throw together on a whim with whatever’s in the kitchen.
Which French desserts can I make ahead?
You can happily make most of the custards and creams ahead. Crème brûlée is actually better made the day before and torched just before serving. Chocolate mousse needs chilling time anyway. Tarts hold well for a day, too. The choux pastries are the exception: Paris-Brest and éclairs are best filled and eaten the same day, or the pastry goes soft on you.
Are French desserts hard to make at home?
Less than you’d think, honestly. The reputation comes from the pâtisserie window, not the home kitchen. A clafoutis or a tarte tatin needs no real skill at all. The custards just want patience more than technique. And only the choux pastries take a bit of practice, but even those come good faster than most people expect.
So that’s the lot. Start with the easy french desserts, work your way up, and don’t let the French names put you off, half of these are simpler than a Victoria sponge. Pick one and make it this weekend!
What is your go-to? Are you a custard person or a pastry person? And more importantly, is there such a thing as too much butter in a French dessert? (The answer is no, but I’m interested to hear arguments otherwise.)
