18 Graduation Desserts Perfect For Your Graduation Party
Graduation means graduation parties. Whether rocking the cool graduation-themed desserts or going with less decorative but equally delicious graduation desserts, desserts of some sort are a must for your graduation party. Check out this list of dessert ideas, including both themed and traditional desserts, for ideas to make your graduation party pop.
1. Dessert Kabobs
These fun desserts are perfect for your graduation dessert table. They combine rice crispy treats, brownies, strawberries, marshmallows, and cream puffs, and cover them all in a chocolate drizzle. You can either buy the rice crispy treats and brownies or make them at home. The final result is a pretty and delicious dessert kabob that was so easy to make!
Get the full recipe at Lil Luna
2. Diploma Cookies
This themed graduation dessert is so easy and so cute! They are basically sugar cookies with a thin layer of chocolate in the rolled-up portions. After mixing together the cookie ingredients, the dough is refrigerated so it is easier to work with. Then, it is cut and rolled into thin little scrolls, each filled with melted chocolate. After baking, you just add a thin chocolate line, making the bow tying the diploma closed.
Get the full recipe at Betty Crocker
3. Boston Cream Dessert Cups
These are great little graduation desserts because they bypass the need for silverware and for cake cutting. The base of these dessert cups is sugar cookies, which are placed in the bottoms of each cupcake cup and baked. You make the cream and dollop it onto the cooked cookies in their cups. Lastly, you spread chocolate frosting on top. That’s it! Now it is time to enjoy these great desserts.
Get the full recipe at All Recipes
4. Marshmallow Graduates
It’s another cute themed graduation dessert! This one is a little intense, but the result will be memorable. The ensemble includes pretzel feet and marshmallow bodies dipped in chocolate and decorated to resemble people. The graduation caps in this one are actually from another recipe, so definitely set aside some time to dedicate to this recipe. Channel your inner artist and make this party’s graduation dessert the one everyone talks about.
Get the full recipe at Candiquik
5. Dessert Cheese Ball
This is pretty easy to whip up, and it is a sweet graduation dessert that most probably has never had. This sweet cheese ball is composed of cream cheese, butter, vanilla, powdered sugar, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. They are all balled up into one massive cheese ball, which is then rolled in additional chocolate chips. Place some graham cracker bites around the cheese ball to complete this dessert.
Get the full recipe at Food.
6. Strawberry Grads
This themed graduation dessert is more of an abstract design, though the effect is still fully felt. A strawberry dipped in first white chocolate then milk chocolate forms the graduate’s body, and upside down Reese’s cups topped with chocolate squares make the graduation hats. A few little added designs here and there complete this dessert, and what a treat it is!
Get the full recipe at Punchbowl
7. Graduation Cake Pops
Yet another themed graduation dessert, this is probably one of the easiest of the themed treats to create. For this one, you just make cake pops of your chosen flavor and dip them in either your grad’s school colors or the typical black and white. Graduation caps of chocolate squares and M&M’s complete this look.
See this idea at OC Pop Shoppe
8. Grad Cupcakes
Bring on the themes! These graduation desserts are all about the look. The cupcakes are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, but you can really use whatever cupcake recipe you wish. The graduation caps, though, are where the creativity is. Beginning with a graham cracker base and including chocolate candies and melted chocolate, these caps are quite cool. The recipe even tells you how to make little candy tassels for the caps!
Get the full recipe at All Recipes
9. Raspberry Cheesecake Bars
Oh man, this graduation dessert takes the cake for sure. The base and top layers include flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and white chocolate chips. These sandwich a cream cheese mixture and raspberry pie filling. Once baked, these bars will melt in your mouth. Cut them into whatever size you want for your graduation party, but know that they will go fast.
Get the full recipe at Recipe Tips
10. Candy Filled Chocolate Graduation Cap Cookies
With a whopping title like that, you know this themed graduation dessert has a wow factor impossible to ignore. The chocolate flat cap top and the chocolate false cap bottom are cut with cookie cutters and baked on a cookie sheet, like normal. However, the shallow portion of the cap that would go on your head is molded around an upside-down muffin pan and baked, creating perfect candy pockets. Fill the pockets with M&M’s and glue the hat pieces together with chocolate icing. How fun is that?!
Get the full recipe at Hungry Happenings
11. Lemon Cheese Tarts
This dense graduation dessert takes a lot of wait time to complete, so prep way in advance. After throwing together the dough for the tarts, the dough is refrigerated for at least eight hours. Then, things get moving again. The tarts are baked until golden brown, then filled with a lemony cream cheese filling. Top with strawberries, blueberries, or whatever you wish, for a completed pretty tarty tart.
Get the full recipe at Recipe Tips
12. Chocolate-Dipped Waffles
This probably sounds like a weird graduation dessert, but it is a good idea. You make Belgian waffles, separate them into quarters, and dip the outer half of each quarter in melted chocolate. Feel free to add additional things, like Fruity Pebbles or peanut butter mini kisses. There is a lot you can do with this dessert. It is easy, it is fun, and everyone will like it.
See this idea at Sugar Swings!
13. No-Bake Thin Mint Cookie Truffles
Girl Scout Thin Mints are crazy good, and this is one way to take them to the next level. There are only three ingredients in this recipe: thin mint cookies, cream cheese, and green mint chips. All you have to do is break up the cookies into fine pieces using a blender, blend in the cream cheese, and make them into balls. Then, dip them into the melted green mint chips. Now just refrigerate! If you want to give them something extra, try drizzling melted white or milk chocolate over them for elegant designs.
Get the full recipe at Six Sisters’ Stuff
14. Chocolate Peanut Butter Pies
What is cool about this graduation dessert is that the pies are individual serving pies. Pre-made graham cracker mini crusts are filled with a mixture of chocolate pudding mix and peanut butter. Top them off with whipped cream and some chocolate shavings for a beautiful dessert that is so so good.
Get the full recipe at Happy Hour Projects
15. No-Bake Cheesecake Mini Desserts
This is another easy graduation dessert recipe that requires no cooking, only some cooling. You simply fill small pre-baked shells with a mixture of cream cheese, lemon juice, condensed milk, and vanilla. Top with whatever fresh fruits you wish, then refrigerate for about an hour. Instead of sticking with only one fruit for your topping, consider using different fruits on different mini cheesecakes so your guests can enjoy some variety.
Get the full recipe at Recipe Tips
16. Easy Cannoli
The unique secret to this graduation dessert is that the cannoli shells are actually tortilla shells. The soft tortillas are covered in sugar, cinnamon, and cooking spray, and baked in a muffin pan until crisp. The filling is made up of skim milk, instant vanilla pudding mix, and cream cheese. Just before serving, drizzle chocolate over top for a fresh and pretty dessert display.
Get the full recipe at Food.
17. Tropical Dessert Cups
These graduation desserts are light and fruity, but with a sugar cookie base. After baking the sugar cookies in muffin pans, top with a mixture of cream cheese, key lime Greek yogurt, vanilla, lime juice, powdered sugar, and lime zest, creating a very light and tropical cream. Last, garnish with berries of your choice. Strawberries and kiwis are a good combination idea to set off the lime.
Get the full recipe at Fun, Yum, & Frills
18. No-Bake Peanut Butter Bars
The result of this graduation dessert recipe is reminiscent of fudge, which is always a welcome treat. Butter, graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar, and peanut butter are all mixed together to form the bulk of this dessert. After pressing this mixture into the bottom of a cake pan, melt chocolate chips with more peanut butter in the microwave. Pour this over the first peanut butter layer and refrigerate for at least an hour before cutting into squares.
Get the full recipe at Six Sisters’ Stuff
