20+ Pantry Desserts, dessert recipes you can make with just a handful of pantry staples.
I’ve been meaning to write a post on this topic for a while, and since so many of us are at home stress baking from our cupboards anyway, now seemed like the perfect time to finally sit down and do it.
Let’s talk about all the things you can bake with pantry staples.
The amazing thing about baking is how many things you can make with just a handful of ingredients. When it comes down to it, most baking recipes are just different ratios of the same pantry staples.
This means that if you keep a basic stocked baking pantry, you can always make something delicious.
Baking Pantry Staples
Everyone’s baking pantry staples are going to be different, but I’ve assembled a list of the bare minimum essentials you’ll need to get started and a level 2 list with a few extra ingredients that will give you even more dessert options.
If you have the ingredients on these lists, you’ll be amazed at just how many different things you can make.
Basic Baking Pantry Staples Level 1 (The Essentials)
- All-purpose flour
- Sugars (granulated, brown, and powdered)
- Cocoa powder
- Baking soda
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Milk
- Butter*
- Large eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Peanut butter (not natural-style)
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Recipes will typically specify either salted or unsalted butter. If you have salted butter and unsalted is called for, reduce the salt in the recipe by 1/4 teaspoon per 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) of butter in the recipe. If you have unsalted and the recipe calls for salted butter, increase the salt by 1/4 teaspoon per 1/2 cup.
Basic Baking Pantry Staples Level 2
- Vegetable oil
- Shortening
- Oatmeal (quick-cook or old-fashioned)
- Ground cinnamon
- Cream of tartar
The Recipes
These are the Baking Mischief recipes you can make with a basic stocked pantry. I’ve divided the recipes into 3 sections:
- Level 1 – If you have everything on the “Basic Baking Pantry Staples Level 1” list, you can make everything from this section.
- Level 2 – If you have everything on both lists, you can make everything from levels 1 and 2.
- Level 3 – You’ll (potentially) need ingredients from both lists and the extra ingredients bolded in the notes below each recipe.
Make sense? Hopefully that’s a yes, and happy baking.
Level 1 Pantry Staples Recipes
Small-batch Shortbread Cookies – Shortbread cookies are as simple as it gets and made with just four ingredients. If you have white chocolate and sprinkles, you can add them, but toppings are totally optional.
Small-batch Sugar Cookies (3 Ways) – You’ll need a couple additional ingredients to make the glazed or sprinkled versions of these cookies, but the base perfect sugar recipe? That one can be all yours right now.
Small-batch Peanut Butter Cookies – This sweet little recipe makes six regular-sized cookies or make One Peanut Butter Cookie that serves two.
One-bowl Small-batch Brownies – This is the most dangerous recipe on the site because you can throw these brownies together so quickly and scarf them down even faster.
Need a bigger, more frosting-covered version? Make these Frosted Brownies or swirl in some peanut butter for Small-batch Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies .
Easy Hot Chocolate for One – Okay, this isn’t a baking recipe, but it is one of the recipes I make most often with baking staples, and I love it, so I’m sharing it.
You can also add ice and make Frozen Hot Chocolate , peanut butter and make Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate , or make a cold version for Chocolate Milk .
Level 2 Pantry Staples Recipes
Small-batch Oatmeal Cookies with Icing – Totally perfect oatmeal cookies without a raisin in sight. Technically these also call for nutmeg in the cookie dough, but if you don’t have it, you can skip it.
Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies – These are currently my favorite cookies, and I absolutely did just stress bake a batch of them on Thursday. Add chocolate chips (milk chocolate is especially good) or make a small batch if you don’t trust yourself with 24 cookies.
Small-batch Chocolate Cupcakes With Chocolate Buttercream – Use chocolate chips where the recipe calls for “chopped semi-sweet chocolate,” and you’re about to have yourself one excellent little batch of cupcakes.
Snickerdoodles – You can make a full-size batch or these bendy, chewy small-batch snickerdoodles . Your choice.
Level 3 A Couple Extra Ingredients
Easy Carrot Cake Recipe – Another recipe that comes in full-size or mini . Extra Ingredients: Carrots & cream cheese
Small Lemon Pound Cake – Possibly the most addicting recipe on this list. Try not to eat both little cakes all by yourself. 😉 Extra Ingredient: 1 to 2 lemons and cream cheese (if you want a cream cheese glaze)
One Banana, One Bowl Small-batch Banana Muffins – These muffins are another Baking Mischief reader favorite. Extra Ingredient: 1 overripe banana
Small-batch Chocolate Banana Muffins (One-banana, One-bowl) – One of my personal faves. The texture of these muffins is just total perfection. Extra Ingredient: 1 overripe banana
Easy Homemade Kettle Corn – Kettle corn has a bit of a learning curve when making at home, but once you figure it out, it is just about the quickest, simplest sweet snack you can make. Extra Ingredient: Popcorn kernels
Small-batch Cream Scones – Why yes, these scones are perfect. Thanks for noticing. <3 Extra Ingredients: Heavy cream & jam (for topping)
A big round up of Easy Freezer Meals that you can make now and eat later.
Hey, friends. I had some regular recipe posts scheduled to go up this week, but with everything that’s going on, I wanted to publish something a little more immediately useful today.
So I compiled a (long) list of my favorite make-ahead freezer meals with recipe notes to make those meals the best that they can be.
Recipes you can freeze are handy because they allow you to cook with fresh ingredients once and store/eat them for months. So if you’re say trying to limit the number of times you hit the grocery store right now, freezer meals have you covered.
Freezing Tips
Freeze things flat when possible. It’s much easier to store and find space for foods that have been frozen flat since you can file them upright or stack them.
When using a freezer bag for storage, first freeze food in the bag on a flat surface like a cutting board or baking sheet. Once frozen solid, you can store it neatly away with your other frozen foods.
Don’t forget to label!! You think you’ll remember what you put in your freezer, but take it from someone who just last week poured frozen tomato soup over her tortellini thinking it was pasta sauce, you won’t. Use a sharpie or sharpie + a piece of painter’s/masking tape to label your food and never wonder what that bag of red stuff in your freezer is ever again.
On freezing potatoes and pasta in soups/stews: Potatoes and pasta are two ingredients you can freeze but you might not want to, as both degrade in quality once frozen and reheated. Potatoes tend to get a little mealy and pasta can become mushy.
If you don’t mind that (some people don’t!), you can freeze and reheat soup recipes that include these ingredients with zero recipe modifications. Just be sure to defrost your soup/stew in the fridge before reheating in the microwave because the amount of microwave time needed to reheat everything from frozen would reduce your potatoes/pasta to mush.
For best results when making soups and stews containing pasta and potatoes, just omit the pasta/potatoes during the initial cooking and then cook and add them to the reheated frozen recipe right before serving.
For example: my Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup calls for 4 ounces of pasta for 4 servings of soup.
- I’d cook the soup without the pasta and freeze it either all together or in individual servings.
- When ready to eat, if I froze the entire pot of soup, I’d defrost and reheat the soup, separately cook 4 ounces of pasta according to pasta package instructions, and add them to the reheated soup just before serving.
- If I froze the soup in four individual portions, I’d defrost and reheat one serving of soup, cook just 1 ounce of pasta, and add it to the bowl just before serving.
The same goes for recipes with potatoes. To cook potatoes to add back into soups, start the potatoes in a pot of generously salted cold water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 10 to 20 minutes depending on potato size, or until potatoes are fork-tender. Drain and add to soup or stew.
See my post How to Freeze Soup for more tips and tricks.
The Recipes
All the recipes I’ve included here are ones that I regularly cook and freeze myself. They freeze extremely well with minimal to no loss in quality.
Some of them can be cooked, frozen, and reheated with zero changes, and some of them need a couple tweaks for best results. For these recipes, I’ve included notes with best freezing practices.
Easy Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup – I almost always have a couple servings of this soup in my freezer during the colder months of the year because it’s warming and comforting, but not too heavy. If you don’t like the texture of frozen and reheated pasta, follow my instructions above on omitting the noodles and cooking and adding them back in after reheating.
Mom’s Sunday Simple Beef Stew – This is one of my favorite comfort food meals and a great way to use a chuck roast if you find one on sale. I don’t care for the texture of frozen potatoes in stew, so I recommend keeping a few potatoes on hand and following the instructions above for cooking potatoes separately when you’re ready to eat the frozen stew.
Easy Tomato Soup Recipe for Two – This fantastically tangy soup can be frozen and reheated with zero recipe changes. However, the recipe’s written to make one huge serving or two smaller ones to go alongside a sandwich or bread, so you might want to double the recipe if you’re making it for freezing.
Easy Chicken Peasant Soup – One of the OG Baking Mischief recipes and still one of my faves. This is another recipe where you’ll probably want to omit the potatoes and add them in after freezing and reheating.
Also, don’t worry about the potatoes in this recipe. Since they’re small and wrapped in flakey pie crust, any texture change won’t be noticeable.
This recipe is written for two and makes 2 to 4 waffles depending on the size of your waffle maker, so if you want to stock your freezer with more, just double or triple the recipe.
Desserts
And a little dessert bonus for you. These are a handful of my favorite desserts for freezing, though honestly, most cakes and cookies and candies do just fine in the freezer and don’t need any special treatment to freeze well.
Just make sure to eat them sooner rather than later, preferably within 2-3 months, as they will very slowly begin to dry out in the freezer.
Freezing Cakes
My favorite way to freeze cakes is to slice them into pieces and lay the pieces on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet/cutting board/plate that will fit in your freezer.
Freeze just long enough for the cake and frosting to be frozen solid and then wrap each piece individually in plastic wrap. Store the wrapped slices in a freezer bag for 2 to 3 months.
When you’re ready to eat, unwrap the cake and let it sit at room temperature for 10 to 20 minutes or while you eat dinner and then enjoy.
Freezing Cookies
Most cookies can be frozen in a freezer bag with no other preparation as soon as they’ve finished cooling.
If you have a cookie with soft frosting or glaze, freeze solid the way you would a piece of cake (so that the frosting doesn’t get smooshed and the cookies don’t stick together) and then store in an airtight freezer bag.
Defrost on the counter for 10 minutes before eating or just enjoy frozen on a warm day.
Easy Cheesecake Recipe – Cheesecake freezes particularly well, and you will never not be thrilled when you find a forgotten piece of frozen cheesecake in the back of your freezer. The sauce included in this recipe also freezes nicely. If fresh strawberries were used, they will have a softer texture after freezing than fresh, but not in an unpleasant way.
These flourless Small-batch Monster Cookie Bars are easy to make and come out gooey, peanut buttery, and perfect every time.
Craving something sweet and peanut buttery but don’t have any flour in your cupboard? You should make a little batch of monster cookie bars…
Easy No-flour Cookie Bars
These small-batch monster cookie bars are a super simple one-bowl dessert that requires zero flour. They’re big on peanut butter flavor and packed full of M&Ms and melty chocolate chips.
Monster cookie bar recipes usually make an entire sheet pan of bars, but this small-batch recipe bakes in a loaf pan and makes just 6 to 8 cookie bars, which is probably good right now, because they are ridiculously addicting, and however many you make is probably how many you will eat. 😉
What is their texture like? The texture of monster cookie bars is somewhere between a cookie and a (good) granola bar. Since there’s no flour, they’re not pillowy like a soft cookie.
Instead, they’re a little gooey and chewy, with a bit of crispiness around the outer edges and lots of texture from the oats.
A Note on Oats
I called for quick-cook oats in this recipe (AKA instant or minute oats) because these oats have been processed into smaller pieces for quicker cooking, and I prefer their texture in baked goods.
But you can use old-fashioned/rolled oats if that’s what you have on hand. The oat texture will just be slightly more aggressive.
You cannot use steel-cut oats in this recipe.
Notes & Substitutions
- I don’t have a loaf pan: If you don’t have a standard-size 1-pound loaf pan , you can use a 5×7-inch baking dish , just extend the baking time slightly since your bars will be a bit thicker.
- I don’t have M&M’s: The texture the crunchy candy shells add to these bars is really fantastic, so if you can get M&M’s, I recommend using them, but any baking chip (I bet peanut butter chips would be stellar) or chopped chocolate candy will work here as a substitution.
- I don’t have oatmeal: Sorry, friend, you cannot substitute for or omit the oatmeal in these bars. If you don’t have oatmeal, give my Small-batch Peanut Butter Cookies a go. You can add 1/2 cup of M&Ms or chocolate chips and still get that chocolate and PB fix, no oatmeal required.
- These bars need about 45 minutes to cool and firm up, otherwise they will fall apart when you try to cut and eat them. BUT if you really want to eat them warm and melty, scoop a serving into a bowl, add a scoop of ice cream and Fudge Sauce or Peanut Butter Sauce , maybe top with a little Whipped Cream and make a sundae out of it!
More Small-batch Recipes
- Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Small-batch Brownies
- Small-batch Banana Muffins
- Small Red Velvet Cake
Equipment
- 1-pound loaf pan
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- ▢ 3 tablespoons ( 42g ) salted butter softened*
- ▢ 1/2 cup ( 132g ) peanut butter creamy or chunky*
- ▢ 1/3 cup ( 67g ) granulated sugar
- ▢ 1/3 cup ( 67g ) brown sugar
- ▢ 1 large egg
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ▢ 1 1/2 cups ( 130g ) quick/instant oats *
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- ▢ 1/2 cup ( 85g ) M&M’s plus more for topping
- ▢ 1/3 cup ( 56g ) chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, combine softened butter, peanut butter, and granulated and brown sugars. Beat until well-combined and slightly lightened in color, about 1 minute.
- Add egg and vanilla and mix until well-combined.
- Add oats and sprinkle baking soda over the top. Mix until well combined.
- Add M&M’s and chocolate chips and use a wooden spoon or spatula to mix.
- Transfer mixture to prepared baking pan and press dough out into an even layer. Sprinkle a few extra M&M’s over the top if desired, and bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned (the center will still look pale and slightly underdone). Do not overbake!
- Allow bars to cool in the pan for about 45 minutes so they can firm up before transferring to a cutting board and slicing.
- Serve and enjoy!
