25 dessert recipes with five ingredients or fewer

These sweet, flaky apple danishes from Australia’s Best Recipes work as both a dessert and a breakfast, and they only require three ingredients. Recipe note: Feel free to swap the caster sugar for ordinary granulated sugar!

Five-ingredient baklava? It’s true. All you need are walnuts, cinnamon, honey, butter, and a package of phyllo dough to make your greatest Greek dreams come true. Taste of Home has the dessert details.

You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make this delicious frozen treat in your own kitchen. Taste of Home can show you how to make a blueberry variety with just four ingredients and your freezer.

Buckeyes, also known as chocolate peanut butter balls, can be easy as 1, 2, 3...except that you actually need five ingredients: butter, peanut butter, powdered sugar, chocolate, and vanilla extract. Tastes Better from Scratch will show you how it all comes together.

Cooking caramels can be a delicate procedure, but at least they only require five ingredients: butter, sugar, corn syrup, evaporated milk, and vanilla extract. Get all of the all-too-important tips from Tastes Better From Scratch.

We found out about this insanely easy cherry cobbler a few months ago, and not only have we made it multiple times since then, but we also know a few family members who have tried it based on our recommendation. Blogghetti gets all the credit here, because not only is this cherry cobbler recipe delicious, but it only requires three ingredients and a just short stint in the slow cooker. 

Chocolate mousse seems so fancy, but it’s actually cheap and easy (unless you order it at a restaurant!). Kitchen Cents can tell you how to make it at home with three ingredients, four tops!

You really only need two ingredients for chocolate peanut clusters, and they’re obviously chocolate and peanuts. Cafe Delites goes the extra mile—or maybe a few extra miles—by including two types of peanuts and three kinds of chocolate in their recipe.

Can you believe these coconut macaroons only require three ingredients? As The Spruce Eats will show you, all it takes is coconut, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla extract—and 10-12 minutes in the oven, of course.

This ridiculously creamy lemon pie from Sally’s Baking Addiction technically requires seven ingredients, but if you really want a quick prep, skip a few steps by simply buying a premade graham cracker crust. Then all you need is sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, egg yolks, and your garnish of choice.

It’s not the authentic Pineapple Dole Whip served at Disney parks, but it’s pretty dang close—and simple, to boot! Just mix vanilla ice cream, pineapple juice, and frozen pineapple in a blender, and serve. Insanely Good Recipes has the ingredient amounts and some helpful serving tips.

Skip the flour—and several other ingredients—and make this chocolate cake from Gimme Some Oven with just eggs, chocolate, and butter. If that’s too easy, you can add powdered sugar, whipped cream, and/or fruit...but let’s face it, it’s still super simple.

This one from Love and Lemons is a cinch! Slice your peaches in half, brush them with olive oil, and grill for three minutes or until you see grill marks. Then dust with a walnut, sea salt, and cinnamon mixture, and serve with ice cream. The ice cream pushes this recipe to six ingredients, but we’ll allow it.

The official name of this recipe from Crayons and Cravings is “lemon cake mix cookies,” because the secret to reducing these treats to just three ingredients is the inclusion of lemon cake mix. The only other things you need are eggs, vegetable oil, and optional powdered sugar.

This mug cake recipe is tasty, easy, and perfect for when you just want a one-and-done dessert. Plus, you can make it in the microwave! All you need is milk, flour, baking powder, Nutella, and this recipe from The Spruce Eats.

Bring these oatmeal cream pies to your next potluck and everyone will swear they are store-bought. Not only are they homemade, but Taste of Home can show you how to make them with just five ingredients.

A three-ingredient dessert you can make in the microwave? Get the fudge out of here! Peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar go into this simple recipe from Insanely Good Recipes, where the hardest part is waiting two hours for it to harden in the fridge.

This recipe from Num’s the Word says it only requires three ingredients, but that’s for regular peanut butter cookies. If you want to make kiss cookies, you’ll need to add Hershey’s Kisses as the fourth ingredient. Either way, these little treats are a snap.

These pecan caramel pretzel candies look like something you’d find behind the glass display at a high-end chocolate shop, but they’re made with candies you can buy in the grocery store checkout line. Taste of Home can show you how to easily make these fancy-looking treats in your own kitchen.

Pumpkin anything is perfection in the fall, especially when it’s a donut that only requires three ingredients, like these criminally easy beauties from Butter with a Side of Bread. You can bake them right in your oven, as the fanciest piece of equipment you’ll need is a donut pan.

Raspberry sorbet is something you have to buy in the freezer section, right? Not anymore! Five ingredients, 30 minutes of prep time, and this recipe from Creme de la Crumb will get you there.

There are a lot of tasty takes out there, but our favorite Rice Krispie Treats recipe is aptly called “Our Favorite Rice Krispie Treats Recipe” from Sally’s Baking Addiction. You just need butter, mini marshmallows, salt, vanilla extract, and a whole bunch of Rice Krispies (or your favorite rice cereal).

S’mores can be a year-round treat. You can make them over an outdoor fire in any season (yes, even snowy winters!) or prepare them in your own kitchen using a gas range or microwave to cook the marshmallows. The traditional recipe is simply marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers, but check out these 15 creative creations from Shared Appetite.

This shortbread recipe from The Spruce Eats is so simple that you probably already have all three ingredients in your kitchen right now. Wanna bet? All you need is flour, sugar, and butter. Pay up!

Adding chocolate or Nutella to a croissant is tasty, but turning your favorite topping into your favorite filling by baking it right into the pastry is downright delicious. This three-ingredient recipe from Australia’s Best Recipes is sort of like the apple danish one earlier in this list because it’s from the same folks!