Super Bowl

40 of the Sweetest Super Bowl Dessert Recipes

Score big with sweet recipes that win every time (whether or not you're actually watching).

January 10, 2022
Photo by Mark Weinberg

The Super Bowl is practically a food holiday—a festive time for cheesy, meaty, and crunchy snacks from dips to sliders to wings. And while a lineup of salty bites is key, don’t forget it’s a long game that cries out for dessert (and that Super Bowl dessert recipes will be very much in demand). These fun and sometimes nostalgic recipes are easily shareable, so pass them around this Super Bowl Sunday and end the epic game on a sweet note, no matter who wins.

It's easy to love that the food sometimes eclipses the game itself. You may not remember the winning team a year or two later, but you’ll never forget the brown butter bourbon marshmallow treats everyone piled on top of.


40 Best Super Bowl Dessert Ideas

1. Magic Cookie Bars

Basically a homemade candy bar but much, much better, these bars are gooey, crunchy, and buttery all at once. They only take a few minutes to assemble and can be sliced for easy serving.

2. Cream Cheese Fruit Dip

Super Bowl Sunday is a day for dips, and this quick and easy sweet dip should be part of your line-up. Make it up to a week ahead of time and serve with your choice of toasted nuts, seasonal fruits, and even cookies for dunking.

3. Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Adults and kids alike cannot deny the appeal of an Oreo cookie. This homemade version can be customized with your choice of buttercream—use a classic vanilla if you’re a purist, or flavor it and tint it fun colors.

4. Sheet Pan S'mores

Nachos for dessert? Yes please. Throw together this sheet pan of deliciousness during a commercial break, provide plenty of napkins, and go to town.

5. Salty Butterscotch Whoopie Pies

With soft cake and fluffy filling, whoopie pies are an easy-to-serve way to enjoy cakey cookies with creamy frosting. A nice dose of salt keeps the sweetness in check.

6. Hostess Cupcakes

Ditch the oddly chewy (yet satisfying) chocolate frosting on a Hostess cupcake and make your own with cream filling, smooth chocolate ganache, and the signature squiggle.

7. Crispy Pretzel-Peanut Butter Bars

These easy bars combine a few of our favorite things: peanut butter, chocolate, and pretzels. No one can resist the crunchy, creamy, salty, sweet treats.

8. Spicy Chocolate-Covered Tortilla Chips

Chips are a must at any Super Bowl party, so why not serve them for dessert, too? The combination of sweet and spicy is addictive, but you can dull down the spicy factor by swapping the chili powder for cinnamon or coconut shreds.

9. Banana Pudding Icebox Cake

There’s no need to switch on the oven or heat up the stove to make this dreamy layered icebox cake. Make it ahead of time so that it freezes solid for easy cutting and leaves you time to prep snacks.

10. Brown Sugar Caramel Corn with Fleur de Sel

While Crackerjacks might be more of a baseball thing, caramel corn is a welcome addition to any viewing party. The easier-than-most caramel recipe is even easier if you have a candy thermometer handy.

11. Brown Butter Nutella Skillet Cookie

You are sure to turn everyone’s eyes from the game when you emerge from the kitchen with this warm and gooey skillet cookie. Swirled with Nutella and studded with hazelnuts and salt, it’ll make your house smell amazing.

12. Strawberry Pop-Tart Slab Pie

What’s better than a warm Pop-Tart? A giant homemade Pop-Tart! This slab pie filled with jammy fresh strawberries and topped with glaze and rainbow sprinkles is as fun as it gets.

13. Chocolate Fondue

After dipping chips into guacamole, salsa, and bean dip, keep on dipping for dessert. Serve strawberries, cubes of pound cake, and even salty snacks like pretzels with this rich chocolate fondue.

14. Lemon-Ricotta Bars

The addition of ricotta makes these more than your average lemon bars. They have the perfect balance of tart, sweet, and buttery with a light texture and are easy to serve when sliced into squares.

15. Oreo Balls

Store-bought cookies, cream cheese, and melted chocolate are all it takes to make a quick, bite-size version of Oreo cheesecake. If you’re feeling extra creative, form the mixture into football shapes before dipping in chocolate.

16. J. Kenji López-Alt’s 10-Minute Lime Cracker Pie

Enjoy the flavors of key lime pie in an altogether new form, and with a surprise ingredient: Ritz crackers. The salty snack is layered with a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, cream, and lime juice before chilling in the fridge, emerging as a glorious tart, sweet, creamy, cakey pudding.

17. Peanut Butter Cookies

Soft and full of peanutty flavor, a plateful of these cookies is guaranteed to disappear before the game’s end. They’re a snap to make, and can even be out of the oven before halftime ends and served warm to your cheering fans.

18. Hazelnut Brittle with Chocolate

Nutty, crunchy brittle is utterly snackable, especially when dipped in chocolate. If you somehow end up with leftovers, you can freeze the remaining pieces for a rainy day.

19. Brown Butter–Bourbon Rice Krispies Treats

Brown butter and pan-roasted marshmallows give these treats a toffee-like flavor and a beautiful golden color, while a generous splash of bourbon and sprinkling of sea salt make them decidedly adult.

20. Vanilla Fudge

Vanilla fudge is ridiculously, deliciously creamy with a delicate flavor and aroma thanks to a whole vanilla bean. Tint the fudge your team’s color for luck.

21. Malted Chocolate Chunk Cookie Bars

If you’re having trouble deciding what dessert to make, then this recipe is for you. It combines the chewiness of a cookie, the no-fuss quality of a blondie, and the fudgy decadence of a brownie in one magical, malty bar.

22. Sweet Cream Bundt Cake

For a guaranteed home run (oops, touchdown), serve a golden brown, buttery, springy bundt cake. Easy to slice and share and easy to customize with icings and toppings (not that it needs any), it’s really perfect for just about any occasion.

23. Chocolatey Tahini Cups

If you don’t have a jar of tahini handy for making [hummus] (https://food52.com/recipes/42695-zahav-s-hummus-tehina), grain bowls, and sauces, these grown-up Reeses should convince you. Adding a little water to the sesame paste will actually make it thicken, ideal for surrounding with milk chocolate.

24. Cherry, Orange & Rye Hand Pies

Hand pies have two major things going for them: they’re individually-sized and therefore easy to serve and eat, and they’re just plain adorable. Between the flaky, sparkly-sugared pastry and the just-sweet cherry preserve filling, what’s not to love?

25. Crispy Crunchy Oatmeal Cookies

While this is an oatmeal cookie, it’s not the chewy, raisin and sometimes nut-laden treat that typically springs to mind. These have a rich, buttery crunch that will keep you nibbling through the final quarters.

26. Black & White Pound Cake

Add some deep, rich flavor and a colorful swirl to your pound cake with the help of black cocoa, a magical ingredient that makes everything taste like Oreos. Baked in a loaf pan, this recipe makes the ideal amount and looks lovely sliced.

27. Sugar Cookie Bars

Throw the cookie rulebook out the window and skip the usual chilling, rolling, and cutting. Baked in a 9x13 or jelly roll pan, in no time you’ll have two dozen bars to feed your hungry teammates.

28. No-Bake Lime Cheesecake

After an afternoon of comfort food, stick a bite of cool lime cheesecake in your mouth and your palate will thank you. With a creamier texture than your typical cheesecake, it’s easy to assemble beforehand and stash in the fridge until serving time.

29. Brown Butter Cupcake Brownies

Nutty brown butter? Check. Moist, tender texture? Check. Gooey, melty chocolate center? Oh boy, check. Somewhere between a cupcake, brownie, and lava cake, you simply can’t lose serving this decadent dessert.

30. Milk Chocolate Bark with Peanuts & Potato Chips

Potato chips and peanuts are nice gametime snacks, but have you tried combining them with rich milk chocolate? It’s a winning combination of salty, sweet, crunchy, and creamy.

31. Vanilla Cupcakes

Cupcakes are a classic dessert for gatherings, and for good reason—they’re cute, customizable, and don’t even require dessert plates. Use these fluffy cakes as a canvas, tinting the frosting your favorite team’s color or decorating them to look like footballs.

32. Chocolate Dump-It Cake

This dessert definitely won’t get a penalty. It’s a chocolate cake recipe that’s beloved in Amanda Hesser’s family and will be at your Super Bowl party, too.

33. Oreo Pie

There’s always a few Super Bowl party attendees who are here for the snacks, not the game, and we salute them. This black and white pie is for them.

34. No-Bake Pistachio Mini Cheesecakes

Cheesecake is a guaranteed touchdown for dessert and this make-ahead version served in individual portions is perfect for any host or game day attendee to bake (err, not bake).

35. Grasshopper Pie

If you look really closely, the green minty ice cream and chocolate crust almost resemble a football field. This Super Bowl pie has three parts—cool mint ice cream folded with chopped dark chocolate, a chocolate cookie crust, and a luxurious fudgy topping.

36. Sticky Caramel Popcorn Balls

Turn a must-have Super Bowl snack—popcorn—into a sweetened caramelized dessert.

37. Olive Oil Blondies With Salted Caramel

Blondies are welcome at every party, but they’re a surefire hit for the Super Bowl. They’re crowd-friendly and pleasing to all. “The grassy and citrusy flavor of olive oil cuts through the sweetness of the blondie and is complemented by the salty, slightly bitter caramel,” says recipe developer Sohla El-Waylly, so be sure to use an oil that you like the taste of.

38. Caramelized White Chocolate & Toasted Milk Cookies

“Toasted milk powder, caramelized white chocolate, and cardamom all give this cookie a warm, cozy aroma that reminds me of my grandmother’s hugs where I’d get wrapped up in her sari,” writes recipe developer Hetal Vasavada of Milk & Cardamom. A platter of these crunchy cookies will disappear by the end of the first quarter.

39. Malted White Chocolate Sheet Cake

Super Bowl desserts should be easy, crowd-friendly, and make-ahead. This light and fluffy cake checks all the boxes and white chocolate malted milk brings a roasted, toasted flavor to every bite.

40. Double Chocolate Weed Brownies

If the game becomes too stressful, have a brownie. If your team loses the Super Bowl, eat the whole batch (okay, maybe not the whole batch). We’ll walk you through the process of making cannabutter, which will yield 8 to 10 milligrams of THC per brownie.

How are you celebrating a sweet Super Bowl victory this year? Let us know in the comments.

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • Michiko82
    Michiko82
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    Fawn Livingston-Gray
Laurel Randolph

Written by: Laurel Randolph

recipe developer, food writer, and cookbook author

2 Comments

Michiko82 January 8, 2021
An incredibly irresponsible article. People are being discouraged from gathering to stop the spread and you’re article references “large crowds.” Disappointing.
 
Fawn L. January 8, 2021
4000 people died of COVID in this country alone today. It’s in poor taste to be encouraging food for a crowd as we know social gathering are a huge cause of the spread. I love your site. Do better!!