In the mood for something sweet? The very best (and most inventive!) ice cream cones, cookies, cheesecake, donuts and other desserts can be found right here in NYC. Whether you’re stopping by one of Little Italy’s iconic bakeries for a cannoli or looking to finish off a restaurant meal with one dessert and two spoons, we’ve tried the sweet stuff all over the city to bring you the best of the best. Old favorites like Magnolia Bakery’s banana pudding and Levain’s giant cookies make the list, as do astounding cake flavors and destination pastries from the minds of the city’s up-and-coming pastry chefs. Go ahead and eat dessert first as you taste your way through the very best desserts in NYC right now.
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April Bloomfield’s stunning new restaurant might be getting the most accolades for its roast chicken and toast with green sauce—but real ones know to save room for the profiteroles. Crispy, crackly and caramel-y, they contain a tender diplomat cream that yields beautifully to your spoon. Reservations are nearly impossible to come by, so head to the bar on an off-hour to order a cocktail and split dessert. (Just don’t come too late, as they sometimes run out!)
Dessert at a wine bar? We’re in. This new small-plate spot in the West Village is a favorite for date nights, and frequently gets packed as the hours get wee. Come for the vibes and stay for the banana pudding, which is served up sundae-style, in a big metal coupe. The bananas are cooked up with brown butter, coconut pudding and toasted almonds, and then flambéed to toasty perfection before getting dropped to admiring oohs (and the bright glare of phone camera flashlights, of course) at your table.
At this diminutive flagship—filled with stone tables and Venetian wood chairs—you'll find the café's signature 20-layer crêpe cakes. Our go-to is the green tea mille, which makes us green with envy that we'll probably never be able to make it ourselves.
At Gage & Tollner, a reimagining of the classic downtown Brooklyn chophouse, the baked Alaska is an unlikely star. An ode to the restaurant’s history—which dates all the way back to 1879—this 19th century dessert has been brought into the future. Here, the baked Alaska is served for two, with layers of dark chocolate, mint and amarena cherry ice cream, then covered with a carefully-torched meringue. The result? Classic flavors that are more than modern enough to be Instagrammed.
While Enrique Olvera’s single-corn tortillas are a favorite, it’s his cornhusk meringue, with its fine, ash-dusted hull giving way to a velvety, supercharged corn mousse, that cements Olvera’s status as the corn whisperer of New York dining.
You could walk by Burrow three times and miss it (and we have). Located inside the lobby of a run-of-the-mill glass building eyesore in Dumbo, there’s no street-facing storefront giving you a glimpse at the magic inside. While others wait for the elevator, head to the back to find the patisserie version of a speakeasy. Burrow has quiet confidence. There’s no over-the-top decorations or crazy flavor combinations, but what they create is nothing short of excellent. The pistachio cake is absolutely worth burrowing for with its pistachio mousse is absolutely worth burrowing for with its hazelnut praline and crunchy feuillantine layers.
Since 1976, Fortunato Brothers has been serving Italian pastries in Williamsburg. Known for their affogatos, cannolis and sensational gelato, here you'll find old-school New York charm. What's especially unique about Fortunato Brothers is their dedication to the craft of marzipan art: bananas, eggplants, ears of corn and more are sculpted with almond paste to look like the real deal.
Layers of Việt coffee and flan create these wiggly, jewel-like jellies served up from Bạn Bè’s sunny walk-up window. The small menu has a rotating assortment of colorful agar jellies, butter cookies and waffles, but we’ll go for this silky, eye-catching treat every time it’s available.
You might know Magnolia for its cupcakes, but the banana pudding is a tried-and-true gooey gift.
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This is a bar unlike all others. Here, drinks aren’t the focus. Stools are placed around the perimeter of pastry chef Chika Tillman so diners can get a voyeuristic thrill as she preps, pipes and plates her desserts in expert fashion. A multi-course “meal” may include an amuse-bouche such as coconut sorbet in a little pool of chocolate-infused tea gelée. The main course might be a warm chocolate tart with pink-peppercorn ice cream, a mocha-and-hazelnut trifle or a delicious fromage blanc cheesecake. It all ends with darling petit fours…as if you needed them!
Nicholas Morgenstern scoops inventive hard ice cream flavors (cardamom lemon jam, chai caramel) and sorbets (Tajin punch, pineapple prickly pear) at this scoop shop. Here, the strong scent of durian is mellowed by sweet banana, making it one of the most complex, interesting ice cream flavors available around town.
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After a successful series of pop-ups, this Southeast Asian dessert spot opened up a permanent location. Here, you’ll find red tortoise cakes filled with mungbean; a baked pandan rice cake with a vibrant green interior; and the fan-favorite “72 hours” pineapple cake, rich with butter and filled with a pineapple jam.
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With an original location in San Juan, Chocobar’s South Bronx outpost brings the chocolate of Puerto Rico to NYC. With a menu that serves chocolate on almost everything (including a chocolate grilled cheese with sweet brioche, cheddar and chocolate butter), it’s hard to choose the best dessert. We recommend going for the lava cake, which is topped with vanilla bean ice cream and strawberry sauce.
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Clio Goodman, the chef behind the cult favorite (and much-missed) Puddin’ bakery on St. Marks Place, is back at it with a newly-opened cake shop. With flavors like coconut rose and bay leaf Greek yogurt, her bright, whimsical cakes look like something your extremely talented BFF would bring to a dinner party. Cakes can be had by the slice at the bakery, but to order a whole cake, you’ll need to act fast—they can only be purchased once a month, and they often sell out in under an hour.
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Rice to Riches, which feels like what the ’90s imagined The Future would look like, is a space-age spot serving up an ever-rotating assortment of flavors of rice pudding like Stubborn Banana, Black Cherry Birthday Suit and Coconut Coma.
This is no 16 Handles swirl! Here, pastry chef Alex Grunert’s handmade fro-yo comes with honey and lavender, creating a fragrant, delicate dessert more suited for eating in a fancy restaurant than on a Washington Square Park bench.
This Dominican diner is one of the remaining relics of old New York. While we love the mofongo, we stay for the tres leches. True fans of El Castillo know that in addition to the classic caramel, there's a special guava tres leches version that's even better.
One of our favorite store-bought ice cream brands finally opened up a brick and mortar in Carroll Gardens. Founded by Pooja Bavishi, Malai serves up flavors from around the world including rose with cinnamon roasted almonds, sweet milk, star anise, ginger root and Turkish coffee. Look out for seasonal flavors like sweet roti and ghee; we love it served in a cone with toppings like cardamom shortbread and peanut chikki.
This photogenic dessert can be found at the restaurant where the photogenic people hang out. Everything about the buzzy, tongue-in-cheek Bad Roman is designed to look even better than it tastes—although we’d say the dessert menu serves on both counts. Reimagined as two trompe l'oeil white chocolate lemons filled with mousse and tart lemon curd, it’s a lemon cheesecake designed to be admired first, and then enjoyed.
Salt, not sugar, is the star of this fan-favorite treat at the famed Brooklyn pie shop. Encased in a crunchy, buttery crust, the chess pie-like base—with honey baked right into the custard—gets a savory finish of fine, large sea-salt flakes on top.
Pastry whiz Pichet Ong makes his return as the consulting chef at this East Village dessert bar. Ong melds Asian and Western traditions with this crispy honey buttered toast, served warm with condensed milk ice cream.
At Peacefood, the fonts on the menu are hideous, the plating isn’t Instagrammable and the interior is…understated. But with carrot cake this good, they don't need to hide behind design. It’s not just the best vegan carrot we've ever had, it’s one of the best carrot cakes of all time.
At this cheery, kitschy Upper East Side family spot, sandwiches, salads and burgers merely set you up for the main course: dessert. The trademarked Frrrozen Hot Chocolate—a brain-freezing chocolate slushie—deserves its reputation. To avoid an ice cream headache, you better bring someone to split it with.
At this UWS nook, size matters. Seductively gooey on the inside and golden brown on the outside, this Holy Grail of cookies is big enough to feed your whole crew (or not, if you don’t like to share). Semisweet chocolate morsels and chunks of walnuts mix and mingle, making each buttery bite better than the next. The only thing worse than waiting on the line out the door is the sinking feeling you’ll get when you’re left with no more bites.
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