Thanksgiving Desserts (All Recipes in One Place)

Thanksgiving is the one meal where dessert gets planned as carefully as the turkey. This page gathers every Thanksgiving and fall dessert on the blog in one place: classic pumpkin pie and the all-butter crust to go with it, pumpkin cheesecake, cookies and donuts, apple desserts, and a few Asian inspired fall bakes made with pumpkin and sweet potato.

New fall recipes are added here as they are published, so check back through the season.

Pumpkin pie and the pie crust behind it

The centrepiece of most Thanksgiving dessert tables, plus a flaky all-butter crust you can use for any holiday pie.

• Homemade Pumpkin Pie: A flaky, buttery crust filled with a creamy spiced pumpkin filling. The post covers homemade versus canned puree and how to stop the filling cracking.
• Flaky Pie Crust (No Shortening): An all-butter pie crust made without shortening, with tips for rolling, lining the dish, blind baking and making a lattice.
• Homemade Pumpkin Puree: Roasted pumpkin puree for pies and bakes, including which pumpkins to use and how to fix a watery puree.

Pumpkin desserts beyond pie

If pie is already covered, these bring pumpkin spice to cheesecake, cookies, donuts and coffee.

• Pumpkin Basque Cheesecake: A creamy burnt Basque cheesecake flavored with pumpkin puree and warming spices, with a charred top.
• Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars: A buttery cookie base with swirls of vanilla and pumpkin cheesecake, cut into bars that are easy to serve to a crowd.
• Pumpkin Cheesecake Cookies: Soft pumpkin spice cookies topped with a swirl of cream cheese frosting and a dusting of cinnamon, in the style of a Crumbl cookie.
• Filled Pumpkin Donuts: Fluffy pumpkin donuts rolled in spiced sugar and filled with a creamy pumpkin custard.
• Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew: A homemade version of the coffee shop drink: cold brew topped with a spiced pumpkin cream.

Apple desserts

Apple season lines up with Thanksgiving, and these range from pastry to a three ingredient carnival treat.

• Fried Apple Pie: Puff pastry hand pies with a cinnamon apple filling, fried until blistered and golden, in the style of the original McDonald’s fried pie.
• Apple Pie Cookies: All the best bits of apple pie in cookie form: buttery pie crust, crunchy sugar and a caramel apple filling.
• The EASIEST Candy Apple: Crunchy candy apples made at home with just 3 ingredients.
• Pear and Caramel Cake: A layered brown sugar butter cake with spiced caramel, caramel buttercream, roasted hazelnuts and poached pears.

More pies for the dessert table

Not every guest wants pumpkin. These two are pies with a twist.

• Peanut Butter Pie: An Oreo crust filled with silky peanut butter cream and a layer of bittersweet chocolate ganache, inspired by peanut butter cups.
• Crème Brûlée Pie: Fried puff pastry with a molten custard and caramel centre, inspired by the McDonald’s crème brûlée pie.

Asian inspired fall desserts

Pumpkin and sweet potato are just as at home in mochi, and these chewy desserts are a change from pie.

• Pumpkin Butter Mochi: Chewy, stretchy Hawaiian style butter mochi made with pumpkin, with a crisp buttery crust.
• Sweet Potato Mochi: Chewy gluten free mochi with a sweet potato filling.

More recipe guides

Baking for Christmas next? Every holiday cookie, cake and hot chocolate is in the Christmas desserts guide. For more by type, browse all cheesecake recipes, cookie recipes and mochi desserts.