109 Desserts So Beautiful They Barely Look Real (New Pics)

My mom’s 50th birthday! I decided to combine all of her favorite things, and most of these were baked. :)
Focaccia (pizza style with cheese, pepperoni, and sauce), roasted tomato, Parmesan, and basil quiche, dates with blue cheese and turkey ham, BBQ pork empanadas, caramelized onion and cheese croissants, shou zhua bing with a dip, sun-dried tomato scones with herb butter, mushroom, onion, and blue cheese bites, arugula, olive oil, and prosciutto toast, and chili dip.
For sweets: churro cookies, pastéis de nata (one of her favorites), torrejas, tres leches cupcakes, fresas con crema, and marquesitas.
And her birthday cake: an ube and white chocolate charlotte, her absolute favorite. This is the second year in a row that it's been her cake!

A sweet young couple at my church just had a baby boy and named him Aslan 🦁
I’m a big C.S. Lewis fan and have loved the Narnia books since I was a kid, so I couldn’t resist baking something special for their family. His mom once told me she loves spiced desserts, so I decided on a chai-inspired tart.
The crust and decorations are cardamom-cinnamon pâte sucrée, and the fillings are: 1) a crispy base layer of feuilletine with caramelized white chocolate and almond praliné, 2) tart apple compote, 3) chai-honey crémeux, and 4) a lightly sweet pectin glaze.

I made this cake for my sisters birthday! Shes got a great sensebof humor! Its a vanilla cake with american butter cream.

Grabbed a new tip while getting piping bags today. Thrilled. I’ve never used one this big and was nervous, but very happy with how it came out.
Chocolate cake, cinnamon soak, cherry preserves, dark chocolate ganache, black sesame frosting on the inside, green buttercream is colored with matcha, butterfly pea, and turmeric.

My wife made our daughter’s smash cake for her first birthday. Winnie the Pooh was the theme and the cake is Pooh’s honey pot. We are absolutely in love with it. She’s not a professional but baked cheesecakes and cookies for family all the time. Just wanted to show off her work. And it tasted great!

Sorry if box-mix is cheating. This derpy bastard took me all night! Ran out of time to add the bird. And of course I forgot to bring the big candle I had intended to put on his tongue. Had to borrow from the play-place and they only had pink T_T. He was strawberry, by the way, with buttercream frosting.

This was SUCH a fun cake to make!! I modeled it after the nachos bell grande.
No fondant, I made the bowl (and tomatoes) out of modeling chocolate.
Chips are sugar cookies (with cinnamon and nutmeg added, for flecks) rolled super thin and baked on crumpled parchment.
Meat is cocoa pebbles basically made into rice krispies, but with a couple chocolate chips thrown in for color and kneaded for texture.
Nacho cheese is white chocolate ganache, same with the sour cream but mixed with a little frosting.
The refried beans are made mostly from white chocolate ganache. I added a couple chocolate chips for color and then chopped some chocolate pieces and jelly beans for texture.

Made this for my sister in laws fairy themed baby shower haha

Don’t come at me. It’s actually angel food cake, sliced and put on the stove to make crispy and frosting with orange food coloring!!🤭

I made the PreppyKitchen chocolate cake and I made both regular and black cocoa buttercream.

Another thing that's been on my list forever that I finally got around to making!
Wish I hadn't waited so long though. It was absolutely delicious, and I really enjoyed making it.
The fillings are vanilla mascarpone cream and raspberry.
Now lets see if I get around to making anything else on that list 😄. Cinnamon buns and croissants are both contenders, so if anyone has a recipe or tips/tricks that they swear by, please share.

Currently studying in France. Something she has dreamed of since she was 10. Wants to eventually open a small shop and also do catering focusing on French pastries.
She paid for school, her apartment, and everything else on her own. Was her goal to do this and come back when it’s all done with no debt. To say I’m proud of her is an understatement.
:update:
Wow so many replies and rewards. I’d love to respond to you all but that will be tough.
First thank you all so much. Second I’ll have to get names of each and try to update the captions. Lastly I’m gonna hold off on sharing location and school until she returns. Just cause the Internet is a bit weird and sketchy. Makes this dad nervous.
Oh and lastly, no scholarships for this. Three years of working in a bakery saving every penny, and HS graduation cash helped make this a reality. Dad and mom pay the day to day (groceries, food, etc) while in France, plus car payment, insurance, gas, etc here at home. This is a 2.5 month program and she is in France for 3 months. School was just under $20k, her apartment is right at $900 a month. This is not in Paris, but a smaller French city.

Five cakes, 420+ sweets and two weeks of work later...gone in two hours 😂

Featuring Beatty’s Chocolate Cake from Ina Garten — the only chocolate cake recipe I use anymore. I’ve stopped searching. It’s perfect.
Paired with vanilla ermine frosting, which might be the best icing out there: super fluffy, not too sweet, and loved by both icing people and “not icing people.”
Slightly more effort… but I’m officially never going back.

Wanted to share all the birthday treats I've made for my mom since I started making cakes almost 4 years ago.
In order from most to least recent.
Pics 1-5 are this year's. I was going for a fairy house/cottage look. Bottom half was carrot cake, top was coconut. Filled with lemon cream cheese frosting and coconut mascarpone mousse.
6-8. Apple cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and caramel.
9/10. Banana coconut cream pie.
11/12. Vanilla and chocolate sugar cookies. Mom loves cows 🐄🥰
13/14. Vanilla cake filled with espresso diplomat cream. Coffee buttercream and salted carmel drip.
15-17. Marble cake filled with vanilla crème légère. Chocolate buttercream.
If anyone would like a particular recipe, let me know which and as long as I can remember what I used I'd be happy to share!

Soft chocolate sponges, layered with silky chocolate cremeux, topped with a shiny cocoa glaze.

My take on the iconic Minecraft game cake. I assembled chocolate blocks to form a cube then filled with cake.

I made trans pride calico cat cookies for my.roommate! I used the Sally's baking addiction sugar cookie recipe for these. Instead of vanilla I used strawberry extract! These were fun and so easy to make!

My first time making a big cake! Decorating was hard but I liked the inside

This is my first time baking for cake4kids, they’re an organization that allows you to volunteer and bake for youth who don’t have access to treats on special occasions. My kid requested brownies and I had so much fun making them😄🙏. Definitely recommend signing up if you love baking, have the means and some extra time!

Matcha cookies with matcha cream cheese butter cream filling and thiccccck matcha ganesh in between, when you eat it freeze or frozen it's like an ice cream sandwich, still at an experimental stage, still need to fine tone the dough a bit, I would like it to have more structure and shape and less wonky when I get it out of the mold but also not too tough because it need to be freeze or frozen 😆 it still looks a bit rough, but it's so fun to make, and very tasty when you eat it cold.

I say finally, because I've been wanting to make them for like 2 years and for whatever reason, never bothered to actually do it (anyone else do this?? What's the thing you keep wanting to bake but don't actually do it?!).
They're far from perfect but not bad for a first try! I hate the color that they turned out. But the taste makes up for it. They were so good. I used homemade lemon curd and raspberry filling.
Also sharing my other Easter treats here. I tried posting them last week but some of my pictures werent showing up properly, so apologies if anyone had to see some of these twice 😄

I tried to make English Bulldog cupcakes that look like my pup. They don’t really look like too much of a bulldog lol, but pretty good overall. First time baking ever + made from scratch! :)

Cake recipe is the yellow chocolate cake from the broma bakery cookbook sweet tooth. Frosted with ganache and filled with pastry cream that are both just typical ratios/recipes I found online. With some whipped cream cuz I screwed up the bottom of the frosting when I moved it onto a bigger cake round. When I was a kid, my mom would always get us the ones from stop and shop that had a maraschino cherry in the middle and me and my siblings always wanted to be the one to get the cherry. So since it’s my cake I decided to put a cherry on every piece.

I’ve been making these for a while now, and I can’t get enough. The texture is really to die for, it’s like biting into a cloud. Next time I will try to add some stronger flavors (this one is vanilla) like black sesame or pistachio.

I just thought this was so cool and wanted to share with someone and make them smile :)

I found lots of different recipes and ideas but ended up sticking with the one below for the ganache & fresh strawberries throughout!
It is filled with Milk Chocolate Ganache and fresh diced strawberries 🍓 with a Fresh strawberry buttercream frosting!

I lost track of time making these horse and cow buns! Let's be real, the process was boring and tedious, but man, were they good.
I shaped the dough, iced on their faces, and stuck on those little almond horns — so much love went into every detail.
It was totally worth the effort though. Biting into this soft, tasty little guy makes all the hard work disappear!😊

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, is this what is supposed to happen? I added the bear about 24 hours ago and noticed this just now. I followed instructions, soaked for 20 minutes, patted dry then put in sugar.

She is in fact the actual size of a hawk. Insane looking, but delicious!

And guess what, they came out absolutely delicious. Better than any store bought cupcake ever would’ve been. 

The lily didn’t come out as pretty as I had hoped but it was my first time making a tiramisu cake and chocolate decoration so I’m a little proud of it! (One of the petals broke off after I took the first pic) I also forgot to add cocoa powder between layers so I sprinkled a bunch on top but it was still yummy!

These lemon-elderflower tarts are layered with elderflower-mascarpone cream and elderflower lemon curd inside a buttery pâte sucrée shell, then topped with cookie daisies, butterflies and vanilla-white-chocolate Italian meringue buttercream.

I’ve been wanting to do this since seeing it all over Instagram lately. 17 types, savoury on one side, sweet on the other. About 2 weeks of planning and baking. My husband did coffees and helped me write out names of items and entertain the baby. My SIL helped to make matcha.
It was so much fun! Planning another one, but Asian themed. Would love some ideas!

It turned out awesome! And it was SO easy.
The frosting I used was actually not very sticky so I actually had to push the parchment paper in on some parts and then I used a butter knife to push around the edges to clean it up.
Let me know if you have any questions from my experience! Thanks again for all the advice!

I made this sea turtle cake for a friend's son just for fun. When they said he was having a party coming up I basically forced them to let me make him a cake because I knew it would be something I've never done before. Probably would have been more stressed if I was doing it for money haha but I could just have fun making it.
My daughter watched me do some of it, and she DEFINITELY didn't think it was going to look like a turtle. I kept saying "trust the process!" which I say to my art students a lot.
Chocolate cake (based off of the 'How to Cake It' recipe), chocolate buttercream (Sally's). Head and flippers were chocolate rice krispie treat and modeling chocolate, and then the shell was fondant. Shell didn't cover the belly enough and I didn't want to add more fondant to expose the naked cake, so I figured sand - but didn't have any graham crackers. I almost DoorDashed a box lol but then found an unopened box of waffle cone bowls in the back of the closet that was still good, so blitzed them up and used those.

Ridiculously good. Even the family members who "don't like cheesecake" liked this one. Everyone scraped their plates clean 😄

It's done!!
Presenting: "Lemon" Banoffee Pie macarons
Made using French method and Sugar Spun Run's ratios
Components - Banana butter cream outer filing (butter, powdered sugar, banana pudding mix, vanilla, salt, splash milk) and dulce de leche middle
And in case you missed it: Strawberry and Grape
And again, allergens will be well-disclosed ahead of consumption, I'm not trying to kill anyone (and this will remain the official party line)
I think these are my favorite out of the bunch - visually, anyway - will do a proper taste test once everyone's had a good time to mature

Made everything from scratch, from the batter all the way to the raspberry compote on top. it was a great hit!

Texture and flavor is excellent. These have a hard, delicious, dark chocolate shell (remember how Entenmann’s used to but now it’s soft?!?). The donut tasted great even without the chocolate.

This was my very first time baking a cake, and luckily it turned out well :) My mother was very surprised!! :D I wanted to make a little pool on top (the store was out of blue/green jelly ;-;) with tiny fishes inside, but they ended up looking more like stingrays lol. I also make art but first time making an edible one! 😄

This was popular in r/cakes so I thought I would post it here too! I tried swapping sugar for Jell-O because Jell-O is almost 90% sugar and they have some great flavors that would be really hard to find as extracts - key lime, island pineapple, apricot, strawberry etc.
The flavor is intense, the color is incredibly bright, and the cake smells wonderful. The texture is soft and a bit sticky, but still like a great pound cake.
I used 765 grams of Jell-O in place of my regular 800 grams of sugar (this ended up being about 3/4 cup less sugar in total). The outside browned more, I believe because of the acid in Jell-O.
Mile High Orange Jell-O Pound Cake
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, room temperature
27 oz orange Jell-O (4 family size boxes plus one regular box), not sugar-free
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 large eggs, room temperature
4 1/2 cups cake flour or White Lily All Purpose Flour
1 1/3 cup half and half, room temperature
Preheat oven to 300°F. Prepare Old Country Kitchenware square tube pan by brushing with pan coat (if using two piece pan, fit with a parchment paper square between the two pieces first). Beat butter and Jell-O in the bowl of a stand mixer until pale, light and sticks to the bowl (about 6 minutes at medium speed). Add extract, baking powder, salt, and 1/2 cup flour, beat until combined. With the mixer running on low, add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition until fully incorporated. Alternate beating in the flour until it just disappears and drizzling in half and half with the mixer running on low, beginning and ending with flour. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and beat for another 10 seconds. Pour batter into prepared tube pan and gently shake to settle the batter. Place on middle rack of oven with a baking sheet on the rack below it to catch any drips. Bake 2 hours or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let cool until the pan is comfortable enough to handle. (If using two-piece pan, place it over a metal can and press down to remove the outer piece first). Transfer the cake to a wire rack in two steps: first, turn the cake up on its side, then invert fully. Let cool completely.

10 hours of decorating, 3.5 dozen cupcakes, 3 batches of SMBC and 2 bags of white chocolate later and I finally got to bring my vision to life for my birthday party! Honestly one of my proudest moments 😭🕯️

This chocolate and coconut Princess Peach cake found its way to two adorable little recipients.
It had chocolate sponge with the YUMMIEST coconut white chocolate ganache filling. The topper is a multilayered sugar cookie sandwich filled with more of the coconut ganache and decorated with royal icing. I ganached the outside of the skirt, then did a pour-over of dyed white chocolate as the outer coating (something I’m not at all tempted to try again). The skirt decorations are mostly buttercream.
I’m in love with this coconut ganache filling I’ve been testing and will share it as soon as I have a bit more time.