Dessert pasta is the craving you didn't know you had. All the comfort and creaminess of pasta but for dessert! What's not to love?
Sometimes we get very firm ideas in our minds about what foods should be savoury and what foods should be sweet.
Take for example chocolate. Chocolate is usually seen as sweet in our collective imagination, that is until it’s put into a Mexican mole and served (savoury) alongside steak or beans or chicken.
The same can be said for mozzarella, which we usually see as savoury but makes a perfect addition to the Middle Eastern dessert knafeh. Pork is savoury until there's candied bacon on our pancakes and French toast is sweet until we have savoury french toast bake.
We see pears as sweet but are fine with putting them into a creamy soup with goat cheese and walnuts. We see cheddar as savoury until it’s baked into the layers of an apple tart, adding complexity and depth and a streak of daring.
Although we've come to accept certain deviations in the traditional bounds between the worlds of savoury and sweet foods, one area where we’re woefully missing out (at least in the English speaking world) is with pasta.
We’re happy with the idea of sweet rice - rice pudding is so common it's a mainstay of airlines and seniors' residences the world over. But the idea of sweet pasta hasn’t hit the mainstream yet.
In Italy there are countless ways to make pasta, both savoury and sweet. There are giant cocoa coated pasta shells filled with chocolate custard, sweet Sicilian fried pasta with candied orange peel and pistachios, and angel hair pasta pie.
The trend extends out of Italy too. There’s Hungarian baked dessert noodles rakott teszta, sweet macaroni pie budinca de macaroane from my native Romania, Croatian sweet pasta pie stonska torta, and of course who can forget the kugel.
There are a ton of ways to prepare and enjoy sweet pasta. The recipe I’ve shared here is a classic taste of Romanian childhood (with a little added adult luxury in the form of the super decadent mascarpone addition). It has relatively few ingredients and it’s simple to prepare. Most often we would eat this at breakfast or as an afternoon snack or dessert.
Much like a good rice pudding, the key is to cook the pasta in the milk low and slow until the milk reduces and becomes a custard-like sauce.
Basically any dry pasta will do but short shapes tend to hold the sauce better i.e. shells, orecchiette, macaroni, fusilli, or cavatappi etc. If you're making this for kiddos then farfalle ("butterflies") and mini wheels might be more fun.
Cinnamon is a must, but you could also jazz it up with orange zest, crushed pistachios, cocoa powder, speculaas spice, or anything else you can think of…maybe even something that shifts that savory/sweet divide further toward the new and unexpected.
More Pasta
More Dessert
Recipe
Sweet Cinnamon & Brown Sugar Dessert Pasta
Ingredients
- 250 grams dry pasta
- 1 liter milk maybe more if it reduces before the pasta is cooked and creamy
- 5 tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 big spoonful mascarpone optional
- pinch salt
Instructions
- Add the milk, pasta, cinnamon, vanilla, sugar and salt to a pot and simmer on medium-low stirring often since the pasta is prone to sticking to itself and the pot.
- Continue cooking for 15-18 minutes, stirring frequently so the pasta doesn't stick. Slow cooking pasta may need a bit longer. If the pasta isn't cooked, add 3-5 minutes at a time (maybe 0.25 cup milk if needed) until it's cooked and the milk sauce is thickened.
- The dish is ready once the milk has thickened into a sauce and the pasta is fully cooked.
- If you want to go the extra mile, swirl in a big spoonful of mascarpone to make it extra creamy.
Notes
- The secret to this dish is cooking it low and slow so the milk has time to reduce into a custard-like sauce.
- If the liquid has reduced but the pasta still isn't cooked, add another ¼ cup of milk and continue cooking or repeat as necessary until pasta is cooked and swimming in a beautiful thick sauce.
- If you use a pasta that cooks very fast (less than 10 minutes) then the milk won't have time to thicken into a sauce. Either use a pasta that takes 10-13 minutes to cook, or be prepared to continue cooking low and slow past the point of al dente - it's okay soft pasta is delicious in this dish.
Erin
You have the most amazing food blog!!! Can’t wait to try this one!
Cristina
Ahh thank you so much Erin!! Please let me know how it goes!
Djg
Measurements are way off. Far too much milk.
Cristina
Hey there. Sorry to hear this didn't work for you. I retested to be sure the ratios work and they do. Keep in mind the milk sauce takes time to reduce so if you use a very fast cooking pasta that's ready in 6 minutes, the milk will still need 15-18 minutes to thicken. I updated the recipe post to be more clear on this point.
Kaz
I searched for cinnamon sugar pasta as a joke but was amazed to see how you actually pulled it off haha! Love it!
Cristina
Haha thank you. You never know what's out there. It's super tasty too if you want to go the extra step and try it ?
Raedan
I made this with some toppings for my blog. https://www.dropsofinkrm.com/post/dessert-pasta
It's a new blog, but hopefully you might one day get some traffic from my post. Your recipes look amazing, I can't wait to try some more. I've already signed up for your newsletter. Thanks for a delicious dessert!
Cristina
Hi Raedan! Thank you so much for sharing this <3 Really glad you enjoyed the sweet pasta 🙂
Faminated Ferret
I made this for breaking-fast this morning except with a few swaps-
– lentil penne
– granulated monkfruit
– 2 vanilla Premier Protein shakes
It was SOOO nom-some.
Thank you for the recipe guidelines!!!
Cristina
Thank you for sharing and so happy this post inspired you to create something exciting and delicious ♥️
Rita
Is this served hot or cold or either? Thanks for sharing! Im making it now with almond milk instead of cows 🙂
Cristina
Hey Rita. Yum almond milk is a great idea. And yes hot or cold both work!
Joselia
Consider my mind blown. I also searched "cinnamon sugar pasta" as a bit of a joke but really because I'm having some serious sweets cravings. Well, I made the dish and my life may never be the same. I added nutmeg, cloves, and just a dash of cayenne pepper. I used almond milk and was worried that it wasn't going to achieve that creamy texture - until I added a spoonful of quark cheese after turning off the heat and WOW! It all came together beautifully. Thanks for the recipe!
Cristina
So glad you enjoyed it! Love the addition of cayenne!
Stephanie Clipstone
Would this freeze in small pots
Cristina
Hey Stephanie. Just going off off frozen dinner style pastas I would say yes, but of course the texture might be a little different.
Hunter
I tried out this recipe and attempted to follow all the instructions (with a pinch of nutmeg added, just for fun), though I found it didn't turn out as expected. The coating turned into a thicker brown-grey gruel, and drowned out all of the pasta we added, only seeing the top of the pasta after it was already done.
A friend was also going to try out this recipe, and I suggested to start with half a liter of milk instead of a full liter, and they said it turned out quite a lot better. It may have just been the pasta we were using (a penne & farfale combination), though I think if someone wants to try this out, it may be wiser to halve the suggested amount of milk. I appreciated the format and thoughts on the recipe though!
Cristina
Hey Hunter. Sorry it didn't quite work out for you and thank you for sharing your feedback.
Alek
My maternal grandmother used to make something extremely similar but using moscovado sugar instead of brown sugar and either ricotta, sour cream or cottage cheese instead of mascarpone, although that was optional. I really don't know where the recipe came from because her roots were mostly in the Aquitaine region in France and the Basque region of Spain, although she was born and raised in Flanders (Belgium). She would also make a version of it adding some cocoa and spekulaas spice and slivers of almond. This last one was a special treat!
Cristina
Oh cocoa or spekulaas is a delicious addition thanks for sharing!
Tera
When do you put in the vanilla?
Cristina
Sorry it wasn't clear. I add the vanilla at the same time as the milk - I've now updated the recipe to be clearer 🙂
John T Rhoe
I must try novel and original dessert .
Karoly Haasz
Hi, I am looking for a childhood recipe, which my father cooked once or twice when I was a child. Dad was a Hungarian emigre living in the UK and did much of the cooking when he was at home from work. So sweet pasta dishes were common, ranging from simply putting grated walnuts and sugar or poppy seed and sugar over macaroni, to more complicated dishes. The one I am looking for looks a little like your shells with cinnamon, due to the tapering shape. It was made by rolling up pastry into a kind of roll that was fat in the middle and thin at the ends. These were then fried with either breadcrumbs or semolina crumbs and served with cinnamon and sugar. They were probably boiled beforehand, but as I was/am allergic to milk, I expect they were cooked in water. However, the "noodles" did not have the firm/slippery texture of traditional pasta and were slightly soft to cut and eat - a bit like uncooked pie crust or bread dough (although they were cooked!)
I do not want to be crude, but Dad said they were "angel's willies" because they looked like the male appendage of babies in classical paintings. I don't know if this was a translation of the Hungarian or whether it was a family nickname for them.
Cristina
Hello Karoly. I do love a culinary investigation and this dish sounds particularly interesting. I did some searching. Could it be something like these Hungarian Cottage Cheese Filled Pasta (Túrós Derelye)? Many recipes show them square but seems they can be made in a crescent shape too as shown here.
Hope this helps. Thank you for sharing your recollection it was lovely to read 🙂