Healthy Italian Dessert Recipes

Sweets not your thing? This cake, a specialty of northern Italy, is almost savory, flavored with rosemary and pine nuts, and gets just a touch of sweetness from plumped raisins, with no added sugar. Chestnut flour tends to clump together, so for the best texture don't skip the sifting step. This recipe is part of Brooke Siem's Grandmother Project. Learn more about this recipe and other recipes Siem learned to make in the article How Cooking Connected One Chef with Grandmothers Across the World.

Studded with chocolate and nuts, these crisp cookies are sure to entice bake sale patrons. Help buyers gauge how to fit this treat into a diabetes-friendly meal plan by labeling each pack with the calorie and carb count per cookie.

Nothing looks more handsome than a bowl of jewel-bright fruits: glistening red berries, burnished plums, blueberries with their dusky bloom. This combination is exceptionally tasty, particularly when the plums have an edge of tartness. Sweeter fruits can be substituted; chunks of nectarines, cherries and gooseberries go together delightfully, as do cantaloupe, blackberries and kiwis.

Dunk these fruitcake-inspired whole-grain biscotti in a cup of hot tea or coffee.

Biscotti are always sweetly welcome dippers for coffee or tea, but you can see how well they accompany cold favorites when you serve them with sorbet.

Lemon zest enlivens the anise biscotti.

Delightful with fruit, these crisp golden slices also make a charming partner for a morning caffe latte.

Drizzled with white white chocolate, these twice-baked cookies are an Italian-inspired classic.

Sweet Marsala delicately flavors this creamy, low-fat raspberry sauce.

A bit of cinnamon, lemon and vanilla flavor these cannoli shells. To make pizzelle cookies, do not roll them after baking; simply transfer pizzelles to a wire rack to cool.

We love these salty-sweet grilled peaches anytime the fruit is in season. Stuffed with goat cheese and honey, they work as a side, appetizer, or even dessert.

In this pretty marbled cookie, one half of the dough is almond-flavored like the traditional biscotti di Prato, and the other half is chocolate/coffee flavored.

Here's how we make our luscious Tiramisù with about a third of the fat and half the calories of most versions: we layer coffee-and-brandy-soaked ladyfingers with an ultra-light egg-white custard combined with rich mascarpone cheese and lower-fat Neufchâtel cheese. This healthier version of the triflelike dessert would pass muster in any Italian café.

Toasted oats, maple syrup, walnuts and dates are a great combination in these crisp biscotti.

This health-conscious makeover of a classic Tiramisu dessert uses silken tofu instead of mascarpone cheese, contains no alcohol, and is served in shot glasses for smaller portions. It's a lower-fat dessert that's simple to make, tastes delicious, and wins big points for presentation.

Strawberries are marinated in a sweet balsamic vinegar and mint sauce to make a perfectly refreshing topper for frozen yogurt.

Vanilla-infused ricotta cheese is the perfect foil for saucy poached figs.

For this celebratory tart recipe, a smooth, creamy, lemon-scented Greek yogurt filling, adorned with a ring of dried figs, is layered on a bed of honey-sweetened polenta. Real, Italian-style polenta is made from medium- or coarse-ground whole-grain cornmeal. Products labeled polenta, medium-ground cornmeal and corn grits (not instant) can be used interchangeably in this recipe

Light whipped topping is the secret to this delicious mousse dessert. Portions of the whipped topping are sweetened and flavored with cocoa powder and strawberries and then layered and frozen to resemble Neapolitan-style ice cream.

Authentic biscotti are low in fat and easy to make. To achieve the characteristic crisp texture, they are “twice-cooked,” first as a log, then again as slices. These fragrant spiced biscotti are excellent dipped in a steaming cup of tea or coffee.

Here, low-fat ricotta blended with reduced-fat Neufchâtel cheese gives this lighter, Italian-inspired cheesecake a great texture and all of the good cheese flavor you would want. We garnish the cake with mixed berries brushed with a red currant jelly glaze. With only 258 calories per slice, this dessert really is a worthwhile indulgence.

Drizzle these twice-baked fig biscotti with white chocolate for added sweetness.

Baked pears are a luscious dessert, particularly when they're baked with Marsala and Italian amaretti cookies.

These savory black-pepper-and-fig-flecked biscotti are perfect for cocktail parties--just spread with softened goat cheese and serve with glasses of Sauvignon Blanc.