10 festive holiday desserts that only need 5 ingredients or fewer
Erin McDowell
- When it comes to holiday baking, you don't need to spend time or money on complicated recipes.
- Many festive desserts like peanut butter balls and chocolate bark only call for a few ingredients.
You might not know that you can make sugar cookies with only three basic ingredients.
These three-ingredient sugar cookies only take 15 minutes to whip up and use things that you probably already have lying around your kitchen: unsalted butter, granulated sugar, and all-purpose flour.
However, if you want to make your sugar cookies even more special, you can also use a few extra ingredients like vanilla, a quick and easy icing, and festive red, green, or blue sprinkles.
Peanut brittle is a sweet and salty snack you can make with just five basic ingredients.
This recipe by SweetPhi uses baking soda, sugar, light corn syrup, dry roasted peanuts, and flaky sea salt to create this rich holiday treat. To make matters even easier, you won't even need a candy thermometer to make this dessert — just a saucepan, measuring spoons, and parchment paper.
Chocolate bark is one of the easiest and most delicious holiday desserts, and you can customize it with any toppings you'd like.
To make this recipe for sweet and spicy chocolate bark, you'll need hazelnuts, two bars of dark chocolate, dried cranberries, sea salt, and cayenne pepper.
One of the best parts about making chocolate bark is that not only can you customize the toppings you'd like to use, but you also don't even need to bake it — simply melt the chocolate, add your toppings, and stick it in the fridge until it is hardened and ready to break apart.
You can also make a festive white chocolate and peppermint bark.
If you love peppermint mochas, you'll love this easy four-ingredient dessert. To make white chocolate peppermint bark, you'll need candy canes or hard peppermint candies, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and peppermint extract.
This easy treat is perfect for making with kids and keeps up to three weeks in the refrigerator, meaning you can enjoy it all holiday season long.
Peanut butter cookies aren't just a crowd-pleasing dessert, they're also super easy to make.
The Stay at Home Chef's recipe for five-ingredient peanut butter cookies is gluten-free and comes together with creamy peanut butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, one egg, and vanilla extract.
Peanut butter balls are a popular baked good to make around the holidays, and they only require a few ingredients.
Whether you're a peanut-butter fanatic or simply an inexperienced baker, this easy recipe only calls for four basic ingredients that you might already have in your pantry: creamy peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, and semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Simply make the peanut butter dough, dip the balls into the melted chocolate, and refrigerate them until the chocolate has hardened. If you want to go the extra mile, you can also top the balls with festive-colored sprinkles or nuts for added flavor and texture.
The prospect of making homemade chocolate truffles might sound intimidating, but this recipe couldn't be easier.
Gimme Some Oven's recipe for five-ingredient whiskey dark chocolate truffles calls for dark chocolate, heavy cream, butter, sea salt, and your choice of whiskey.
Be warned: these sweet treats aren't intended for kids. Since the truffles aren't baked, none of the alcohol will "burn off" in the baking process.
If chocolate or peanut butter isn't your thing, these perfectly tart lemon bars only require five ingredients.
To make these easy lemon bars, you'll need all-purpose flour, butter, powdered sugar, eggs, and lemons. Or, if you're looking to make life even easier, you can also buy store-bought lemon curd like this one from Stonewall Kitchen.
Chocolate-covered strawberries are always a hit and only require two ingredients.
To make this crowd-pleasing dessert, you'll simply need to dip your strawberries into melted semisweet chocolate, set the strawberries down onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper, and wait until the chocolate has set.
To make your chocolate-covered strawberries even more show-stopping, you can also melt some white chocolate and drizzle it over the top of the strawberries before setting them aside to harden.
Chocolate fudge is perfect for setting out at a holiday party and can even be given away as a heartfelt gift.
Taste of Home's recipe for five-ingredient chocolate fudge calls for pantry staples butter, semisweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla extract.
The recipe is not only incredibly easy, but it also only takes 10 minutes to prepare, meaning you can have a sweet treat ready to serve faster than you can say "mistletoe."
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