The Favorite Desserts Of 14 Celebrity Chefs

Your favorite celebrity chefs spend a lot of time creating and demonstrating your favorite recipes in books, online, and on TV. But these celebrity chefs have favorite recipes of their own that you might want to try, and they include several desserts that you may not have heard of. Some of these favorites are classics, and some are new creations — and they're all comforting and satisfying in their own ways.

Jokes often fly during meals about always having room for dessert, and that determination to eat something sweet might be hard-wired into our heads. A 2025 study published in Science magazine found that, at least in mice, the same neurons that signal satiety after a meal also signal sugar cravings. While it's possible to not have much of a sweet tooth, it's a given that most people do. If you're looking for new desserts to try, check out these favorite desserts from 14 celebrity chefs.

Julia Child was known for her adoration of French food, and she won over cooks and television audiences worldwide with her ability to present what looked like difficult gourmet dishes as meals that anyone could make. True to form, Child's favorite dessert was a little-known French dish whose name initially makes it sound very complicated. However, this is something you can make without much fuss, and you can definitely make it at home.

Child's favorite dessert was the elegant île flottante, or "the floating island." This is a piece of poached or baked meringue in a pool of crème anglaise, usually topped with a little caramel or a hardened, swirly piece of sugar art. If crème anglaise sounds too fancy, keep in mind that it's really just custard sauce. This is a very sweet dessert, with lots of sugar in both the meringue and the custard (especially if you add the caramel or sugar art). Baking the meringue was Child's preferred way to make it, and that may be an easier technique for those making the dish for the first time. The poached version is simmered in milk. You can also use fruit purees or fresh fruit instead of that caramel topping.

Anthony Bourdain was not really the chef to go to for dessert. This is the man who, in his cookbook "Appetites," limited the dessert chapter to one page and told readers to serve cheese. He was open about not writing much regarding desserts, at one point wondering why anyone would want recipes given his distaste for the course and claiming that he wasn't good at baking. Still, even he liked a few sweet dishes once in a while, mainly those from his childhood. One in particular is a classic that his mother often made when he was younger: a nostalgic caramel treat called crème caramel.

Crème caramel is a thick, creamy custard usually served in a rather flat, round shape with caramel sauce generously poured over it. It looks a lot like flan, even though some of the ingredients are different. Crème caramel is actually served upside-down; when making it, you place the custard on top of the caramel only to flip the pan over onto the serving plate so that caramel ends up on top of the custard.

Ina Garten has so many wonderful, easy dessert recipes that it can be difficult to choose which to make first when you crack open her cookbooks. One way to narrow down the choices is to try Garten's own favorite desserts, of which there are two: classic profiteroles when visiting France and a nice raspberry rhubarb crostata specifically for springtime.

Garten's love for profiteroles was evident in her Instagram feed when she posted a video showing chocolate sauce being drizzled over large profiterole halves packed with ice cream, calling it the "only dessert to order in Paris." Profiteroles are her ultimate dessert recommendation for Valentine's Day as well. Profiteroles are also known as cream puffs, and they're usually served split in half with ice cream or pastry cream in the center. But if you want to know what her favorite dessert would be in spring, specifically, get ready for raspberries and rhubarb, which she pairs in a free-form crostata. The filling is laced with orange zest and juice, and the crust is dusted with sugar — just the combination you want when days are getting warmer and berries fill supermarket shelves.

David Chang's favorite dessert starts with a famous doughnut brand and is one his friend dreamed up. The dessert is an innovative take on a classic combination: pan-fried Krispy Kreme doughnuts over melted ice cream and cereal milk, topped with more ice cream. The combination of ice cream and cake isn't new, but somehow Chang's friend discovered that the combination of the airy, glazed doughnuts and melted, cold dairy elevated the concept of ice cream and cake beyond what you thought it could ever be. Chang made the dessert on his show "Dinner Time Live" in 2024 to the utter delight of guests Rashida Jones and Steven Yeun.

Chang created another dessert using Krispy Kreme doughnuts for his show that got rave reviews from guests, too. Instead of pan-frying the doughnuts and adding dairy, he flattened several of the doughnuts in a tortilla press, making them as thin as possible. Then, he stacked them in threes, mixed softened butter with brown sugar, spread the mixture between each layer of doughnuts, and packed each pile into the cups of a muffin tray. After baking them for about 24 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, he had a Krispy Kreme version of the popular kouign-amann pastry. If you try this at home, Chang suggests baking for 15 to 20 minutes and keeping a close eye on the pastries.

Wolfgang Puck pioneered modern fusion cuisine and California cuisine at his restaurant, Spago, but his favorite dessert isn't fusion. In fact, it's not even a recipe; Puck's all-time favorite sweet treat is just dark chocolate that's at least 70% dark. He loves it so much that he's confessed to hiding some in the freezer to keep it away from his son, and he's also admitted that he has a refrigerator in his bedroom that's filled only with dark chocolate.

His restaurant menus reflect his devotion to dark chocolate, completely eschewing the milk and white versions. He's also said that he won't give up dark chocolate despite reducing or eliminating other desserts like cookies from his diet. While dark chocolate may technically be a treat, it's definitely one of the better ones to have given its relatively abundant amounts of minerals and flavonols, which may protect heart health. Puck hasn't mention eating it for the health benefits, however, except to say that when he can't sleep, he'll grab some dark chocolate.

Gordon Ramsay isn't exactly known for having a sweet demeanor on his shows. This is the man who, when asked about what he'd have for a last meal on "Mythical Kitchen," added a deep-fried Mars bar as a nod to his Scottish heritage, only to talk about how terrible the concept was and to call it disgusting. In reality, though, he's known to be a much kinder person, and Ramsay's spectrum of iconic favorite foods does include a sweet treat. This is the other dessert he'd have with his last meal: sticky toffee pudding.

Ramsay has said he loves this dish because his mother used to make it as a special dessert for birthdays. When he took a bite of the pudding during that "last meal," he called the pudding "absolute heaven," (via YouTube). The dessert consists of baked cake made of not only flour and sugar, but dates as well; Ramsay's version uses pureed dates. Ramsay's take on the toffee sauce that covers the cakes includes a little bit of bourbon, too.

If you tend to waffle over whether to make cakes, pies, or cookies, you're in luck. Carla Hall's three favorite desserts come from each of those categories. In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Hall said pie would be her recommendation for when you have to prepare only one dessert for the holidays. And she wasn't kidding; in November 2024, she posted her 10 favorite pie recipes on Facebook specifically for people to make during the holidays.

However, she's also said that her overall go-to dessert is German chocolate cake, noting that she had childhood memories of playing canasta while eating this particular dish. And if you're thinking about what cookies to make the next time the winter holidays roll around, consider making the cookies that Hall says will stand out among the other desserts: Linzer torte cookies. Hall likes how the snappy texture of the cookies contrasts with the softer textures of cake and pie.

Bobby Flay's choice of favorite dessert is interesting. It's one he absolutely loves, but it's also apparently not what he'd have at his last meal. Flay's all-time favorite dessert is the Ultimate Coconut Cake from the Peninsula Grill in Charleston, South Carolina. This is a huge cake (which you can mail-order, by the way, for almost $300) with 12 layers of vanilla cake, cream cheese frosting, and coconut that weighs in at a whopping 12 pounds. The cake has been on the Grill's menu since the restaurant's second day in operation, and it remains a customer favorite. 

Flay actually had the cake's creator on his show, "Throwdown With Bobby Flay." But when Flay was asked about what he might have for his last meal, he chose an ice cream sundae for dessert. His dream sundae would have chocolate or caramel sauce and a cherry, and possibly whipped cream. 

The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, is known for her many desserts, but tres leches cake is her favorite sweet dessert. She's stated that no other cake comparesto it, and she loves the topping and the moist texture of the cake. She first heard about the cake from her friend when she asked the friend what cake she wanted for her birthday. Once Drummond tried the cake, she was hooked.

Tres leches cake is a sponge cake that you soak in evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and heavy cream or whole milk, hence the name "tres leches," or "three milks." It's frosted with whipped cream, and if you make it, don't substitute another type of cake. The reason tres leches uses sponge cake is because that will hold up best after being soaked in all the milk. Drummond notes that you have to be careful not to overmix the cake batter because that would make the cake too dense to absorb all the milk, and the resulting cake would be too dry.

The celebrity-chef favorite-cake streak continues with Alex Guarnaschelli's endlessly relatable favorite: devil's food cake with chocolate frosting and whipped cream. Guarnaschelli actually loves cake in general and has noted it's her favorite food overall. Devil's food cake with that frosting and cream is also her favorite chocolate-flavored food.

It's easy to see why when you taste the rich, if oddly named, cake. When the recipe was first created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was considered so rich and decadent that it was jokingly labeled a sinful dish, hence the name. Angel food cake was also popular at the time, so the name "devil's food" may have seemed doubly appropriate. However, the true origins of those names are the subject of a lot of speculation, too. Recipes for devil's food cake tend to use a good amount of sour cream and baking soda, as well as water and coffee so that the chocolate flavor stands out.

Former singer and now chef Trisha Yearwood turns to savory ingredients for her favorite sweet recipe. She loves brownies, but instead of making plain old chocolate with the occasional walnut piece, her favorite brownie is made up of an unusual combo: heaps of bacon and crushed potato chips. And "heaps" isn't an exaggeration; her recipe requires eight slices of bacon cut into pieces, and 2 1/2 cups of crushed, ridged chips for a 9x13-inch pan of brownies. She's stated that this recipe is one of her most requested, too.

Yearwood also has a soft spot for a dessert that was her father's favorite. He used to eat a type of fried pie that his mother made, and for years, Yearwood thought the recipe had been lost. She and her sister finally found a handwritten recipe card in a cookbook, and she's named the recipe "Jack's fried pies." The pies are fried apple hand pies that are filled with spiced Granny Smith apple chunks.

In 2022, chef Geoffrey Zakarian dropped the recipe for his favorite dessert, a raspberry soufflé, on his Instagram account and said that a soufflé was a beloved sweet treat for him. Soufflés are flour-free desserts made mainly from egg whites and yolks plus sugar, but rather than turning out like crunchy meringue cookies or pavlovas, a soufflé ends up being like a very airy cake. The name is derived from the French word for "to puff," and soufflés are famous for their rise during baking. Legend had it, according to many TV shows, that one loud sound would supposedly cause the soufflé to fall and ruin that desired puff. That, of course, was a myth, but soufflés have had a reputation as being very fancy.

Zakarian's Instagram soufflé recipe was a bit different. There were no egg yolks; just the whites along with pastry cream, raspberry puree, sugar, and vanilla extract. According to his instructions, you'd still beat the egg whites, but you'd then add the sugar, and finally mix in the cream and puree. Soufflés can be of just about any flavor, so if you want to branch out from raspberry, you'll find many different recipes online.

Padma Lakshmi had the opportunity to meet with people from the Wampanoag nation for a Thanksgiving episode of her show, "Taste the Nation," in 2021. In an interview with Mashed, she said that she wasn't really into desserts prior to the show. But one of the dishes she learned to make for that episode was blueberry slump, and that quickly became her favorite dessert. She liked it so much that she made it again when she returned home during the summer.

Slumps belong to a family of desserts that include crisps, cobblers, buckles, and sonkers. Slumps are sometimes called grunts, and they tend to have fruit covered with either pie crust or biscuit dough. It's similar to a cobbler with biscuit dough dropped over the top, but the doughy topping on a slump is not added in the same random way. And, as with so many of these recipes, every family seems to have their own take on it; it's not unusual to find slumps that look like cobblers and vice versa.

Prue Leith has given television viewers many a baking tip over the years in her role as a judge on the "Great British Bake Off" and "The Great American Baking Show." When she spoke with Mashed in 2023, she said that her favorite recipe to bake was a Normandy tart, and she had actually baked one just that morning. She said the tart was easy to make and that it didn't take long, but it also looked very nice.

A Normandy tart is an apple tart that includes cream and Calvados, which is a type of apple brandy. The cuisine in Normandy, France, often includes Calvados and heavy cream, and apple desserts are very common in fall in the region, hence the tart's name. The filling is a mix of some form of pastry cream and apple slices, and the crust isn't baked ahead of the filling. The apples can be sweet or tart, but the flavor has to be very good. That's non-negotiable in the recipe.