17 Best Italian Desserts to Brighten Up Your Weekend

If you like baked cheesecakes, you’ll love this Italian Ricotta Cheesecake. Ricotta cheese blends with mascarpone, Amaretto soaked raisins and candied citrus peel to create a beautifully flavoured cheesecake. It’s all piled onto an amaretti cookie crust to add an extra flavour dimension and bump up the luxury factor.

If you're vegan, you may have had trouble enjoying one of the best desserts in the world, the wonderful biscotti. This recipe for vegan biscotti is easy and a healthy twist on an Italian classic.

Castagnaccio is a traditional Tuscan cake born as a poor peasant dish thanks to its cheap main ingredients: chestnut flour and water. To give it more flavor it’s then enriched with raisins, pine nuts, olive oil, and rosemary. It sounds like a savory dish, but you’ll be surprised by its sweetness.

When you need a little something extraordinary in your everyday life, this Italian apple and fig polenta torta fits the bill. Simple ingredients combined together make this exquisite cake.

Cannoli are notoriously difficult, but these mini cannoli bites with ricotta are so easy to make and great for a party!

A Torta Gianduia is a traditional Italian chocolate hazelnut cake that hails from the Piemonte region in northern Italy. The name of the cake refers to the marriage of chocolate and hazelnuts, which is always a winner.

This spectacularly creamy Coconut Panna Cotta is extremely easy to make, similar in texture to a classic panna cotta, and has no refined sugars, and is paleo, dairy-free, and vegan-friendly! 

These vegan Italian Rainbow Cookies or "seven-layer bars" or "Napoleon cookies" are made of three layers of almond cake spread with apricot jam, and coated in chocolate. When cut, the Italian flag is revealed.

Cantuccini Toscani, or Tuscan almond biscuits, are traditionally baked twice for extra crispiness. This easy cantuccini recipe is highly versatile, as you can easily play with the flavours.

Tiramisu has many variations, and fruit ones are ideal for warmer days. This simple, non-alcoholic, no-egg tiramisu incorporates fresh raspberries for a very summery dessert.

These lemon ricotta doughnuts are soft, fluffy and very tasty. They’re super simple to make and you can whip them up by the time it takes for the oil to get hot!

This delicious tiramisù with apricot purée and blueberries gets an even richer taste with the addition of a bit of Marsala.

These Italian butterballs are straight from Grandma’s kitchen and are perfect to include on your cookie table at weddings and holidays!

Crostoli are an addictive fried pastry traditionally prepared for Carnevale but they can now be seen on all special occasions.

These ice cream cone cannoli boast all the deliciousness of a good old fashioned cannoli but without any of the fuss.

This Italian Plum & Almond Cake with Amaretti Biscuits is really simple to make, you don't even need a food processor. Delicious plums, ground almonds, and crunchy amaretti biscuits topping — heaven!

Delicate, crisp, and light, these beautiful and tasty Italian waffle cookies are known as pizzelle. Anise is the most common authentic flavor, but you can make lemon, cardamom, and chocolate pizzelle too!