14 US Presidents And Their Favorite Decadent Desserts

Presidents in the United States get to enjoy all sorts of delectable foods created by White House chefs, which begs the question of what they prefer after dinner once their sweet tooth kicks in. Even with access to practically anything they want, many presidents have opted for family favorites, desserts made by their wives, or something fairly simple. Still, others have loved desserts that were a little more complicated.

It's interesting, too, to note how the desserts the presidents loved fit into history. The availability of ingredients, technology, and food trends have all made a difference in presidential dessert favorites. And when the public or White House chefs have learned of a favorite, they've sometimes gone over the top to provide a sitting or former president with what they like.

We've taken a closer look at 14 U.S. presidents and their most beloved desserts. From simple classic confections and frozen desserts to multi-step baked treats, perhaps a presidential favorite on this list will inspire your sweet tooth.

Founding Father John Adams was a big fan of apple pan dowdy, specifically the one made by his wife, Abigail Adams, for him and their guests. Apple pan dowdy is a recipe that arrived in the U.S. with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania. The "dowdy" part of the name refers to the sloppy way you're supposed to slice the top crust into pieces. So, it ends up looking more like a messy cobbler than a pie. It was among the first desserts to be made in the White House, since John Adams was the first president to get to live there.

The recipe for the first lady's apple pan dowdy has endured. The butter-brushed dough is cut into 16 pieces, pressed together, chilled, and halved into a top and bottom crust. Inside is a combination of apples (specifically a winter apple called Newtown Pippin apples), sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, molasses, melted butter, and water. It bakes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes before you cut into it to "dowdy" it up. Then, you bake it for another hour at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. While it's often served today with whipped cream or ice cream, ice cream didn't make it to the White House until later.

If you love ice cream, you can thank Thomas Jefferson for helping make it popular in the U.S. A recipe for homemade ice cream still exists in Jefferson's handwriting, but it seems it came from his French butler, Adrien Petit. It's thought that Jefferson (president from 1801 to 1809) most likely first encountered ice cream during his travels in France, where it made its way into French cookbooks in the early 1700s. Although ice cream was first served in the U.S. around 1744, it wasn't widely available at the time of Jefferson's presidency.

To make ice cream possible at the White House even during the summer in an era without electricity, Jefferson added an ice house on site. Thus, everyone invited to the Independence Day celebration at the White House on July 4, 1806, was able to experience it at the height of summer. Without electricity, the process required hiring someone to turn the crank on the homemade ice cream machine. Other times throughout the year, Jefferson served his guests ice cream on top of warm pastry-type desserts. The ice cream recipe Jefferson used called for cream, lots of egg yolks, and sugar, without any flavoring like vanilla. So, essentially, it was more like custard than what we think of as ice cream today.

There are dishes with a few different names that are associated with (and named for) John Tyler, the 10th U.S. president. One is Tyler Pie, which is more like modern-day Chess Pie. However, the version that appears in "The James River Plantation Cookbook," written by a descendant of Tyler, is more likely to be the one that the president enjoyed, and it's called Tyler pudding (or sometimes sugar pie or pudding pie).

For a little disambiguation, Tyler pudding is a pie, but the filling is pudding-like. It starts with a pie crust on the bottom and contains a filling made from fresh coconut, eggs, sugar, heavy cream, and butter. Technically, the filling more closely resembles a custard than a pudding since it uses eggs as a thickener rather than a starch.

Tyler was president from 1841 to 1845, and coconut became a plantation crop in Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) in the 1840s. With the fruit becoming more readily available, coconut desserts started appearing in cookbooks in the mid-1800s. So, with coconut suddenly becoming easier to find, it's no wonder it's an ingredient in his favorite dessert. 

When Zachary Taylor became the 12th president of the United States, he got the White House chefs to make calas-tout-chauds cakes for him. Calas are fried New Orleans-style rice fritters in the culinary neighborhood of beignets. They are made from a mixture of rice, sugar, baking powder, and eggs with enough flour to keep the cakes together. The fritters are flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla and are deep-fried by the spoonfuls. Once they come out of the hot oil, they look like a cross between funnel cakes and hush puppies and get sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Calas-tout-chauds have an interesting history. Back in the 1760s, when Louisiana came under the control of Spain, enslaved Africans often sold calas on their day off (shouting in Creole "calas tout chauds" to indicate they were still hot) and used the money to buy their freedom under the rules of coarctación. So, these treats were already an important part of U.S. history long before the 16 months Taylor served as president between 1849 and 1850.

Abraham Lincoln's favorite dessert was reportedly a white almond cake that his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, made. The first lady was lucky enough to be able to get the recipe for this beloved cake from a bakery that catered in her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. She first made it for her future husband when the two were dating before it became part of the culinary dessert repertoire at the White House.

As you can probably guess from the name of the cake, it's white and contains blanched almond slivers. The coloring comes from using six whipped egg whites instead of whole eggs. Most of the other ingredients are what you'd expect: sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, milk, and salt. Plus, it's flavored with vanilla. Instead of frosting, it was sometimes served with powdered sugar sprinkled over the top.

The Lincolns lived in the White House from 1861 to 1865 and while almonds were first planted in California in the early 1850s, they didn't really start to thrive in California until the 1880s. While the types of almonds used in the cake could have come from California, they were most likely imported from Europe.

Rice pudding lovers may be interested to know that Ulysses S. Grant was fond of rice pudding. Specifically, he enjoyed lemon rice pudding. The lemon rice pudding that Grant was crazy for not only was flavored with lemon peel and contained slivered almonds but it was also served with a sweet and tangy lemon sauce. The dish started with rice cooked in milk. Then, the rice was mixed with butter, lemon peel, eggs, and sugar before being baked into a custardy rice pudding with slivered almonds on top. Whether hot or cold, it was covered in a cornstarch-thickened sauce made of sugar, salt, water, butter, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

Grant was president from 1869 to 1877, and Florida started getting into the full swing of citrus production in the mid-1870s. However, it was more likely that the fruit for the lemon rice pudding came from the lemon trees that grew in the White House Conservatory. Lincoln was known to gift citrus fruit from the Conservatory to important visitors a few years earlier during his presidency.

The cookies that President Theodore Roosevelt loved for dessert got their name, Sagamore Hill sand tarts, from the name of his estate in Oyster Bay, New York, and the somewhat sandy texture of the shortbread-like cookie. It was a family recipe that Teddy's wife Edith Roosevelt had saved by writing on the inside cover of one of her cookbooks.

Not only were they a favorite of the president, but they were also the cookies the family liked to offer to guests at Christmas alongside a cup of coffee. The cookie included the usual butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, but what set them apart was that they contained two full eggs and one egg yolk. After the chilled dough was rolled and cut with cookie cutters, the leftover egg white was brushed over the top of the cookie to help adhere a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar. If you can locate a copy of "The Presidents' Cookbook" or the "American Cookie," you can find the full recipe there.

The White House first got electricity in 1891 and the first electric refrigerator in 1926. So, they certainly weren't using an electric refrigerator in the kitchen to chill these cookies but more likely an old-fashioned icebox since Roosevelt's presidency was from 1901 to 1909.

While fruitcakes have made an appearance during many White House holiday seasons, Franklin D. Roosevelt liked fruitcakes all year long. His love for fruitcake was so well known that he was often gifted extravagant ones from his admirers.

While Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential term fell during both the Great Depression and World War II, between 1932 and 1945, it didn't stop an outpouring of outrageous fruitcakes from his supporters. He received a 110-pound fruitcake for Christmas from Californian Bill Baker in 1933. It was decorated with scenes from California, including palm trees, flowers, and mountains. Fast forward to 1938, and Ruth Jackson decided to make another huge fruitcake birthday cake as a thanks from the people of Eagle County, Colorado. She started making this ornate 5-foot-tall fruitcake around Christmas, and it weighed around 70 pounds by the time she finished it a month later. Of that weight, 30 pounds came from decorations, and 15 from fruits and nuts. The ingredient list also included 120 eggs. This extraordinarily ornate cake featured golden words of greeting from the U.S. people, images of Uncle Sam, 48 flowers to go along with the names of the then-48 states, and a sugar replica of the federal Capitol building and its lawns on top.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was known to be a fan of a wide variety of desserts. Some of the more ordinary ones he liked were sugar cookies, fudge, apple pie, and rice pudding. However, a more unusual one was prune whip, which became popular for a hot minute when Eisenhower called it his favorite food. Before you discount prunes as a dessert ingredient for having a reputation for helping to keep you regular, keep in mind that they're just dried and more flavorful plums.

Prune whip is a molded and congealed dessert, which makes sense since Eisenhower was president from 1953 to 1961, during the era when those were popular. It was made by mixing unflavored gelatin, prune juice, prune pulp, lemon juice, and sugar into something resembling a pudding. It also contained chopped nuts and whipped egg whites mixed in. It requires chilling to set up then holds together well enough to be served in a mold rather than just spooned into serving dishes. Some people like it with whipped cream on top.

Back in the 1980s, it was difficult to think of jelly beans without associating them with Ronald Reagan. You could always find jars of Jelly Belly jelly beans at the White House when Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989.

Reagan picked up his jelly bean habit when he tried to quit smoking while running for governor of California in 1966. As governor, his jelly bean love was infectious, and guests enjoyed them, too, which meant his office went through a reported 24 pounds of the candy monthly. After Jelly Belly jelly beans were introduced in 1976, it took two years for him to start buying them exclusively. For his presidential inauguration, he got an order of 7,700 pounds of red, white, and blue (cherry, coconut, and blueberry) Jelly Belly jelly beans delivered to the White House to celebrate. Once those were gone, Reagan's Jelly Belly order increased to 720 pounds a month to satisfy his habits and to give as gifts in a special crystal jar featuring the presidential seal.

Even with all the flavors available from Jelly Belly, Reagan continued to have a standard favorite. He was partial to a flavor that many people dislike altogether: licorice.

Of all the desserts that have been favorites of U.S. Presidents, the one that arguably looks most tempting is George W. Bush's favorite: a 7-layer chocolate cake. The former pastry chef to the White House under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Bill Yosses, revealed that this decadent thin rectangular cake was the dessert that Bush most enjoyed and tended to request for his birthday and throughout his time as president between 2001 and 2009. While he expected a dessert every evening as president, this one was his favorite.

The cake contains a lot of the ingredients you'd expect, like butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder. According to Yosses, it also contains buttermilk (although we've seen versions that use whole milk and cream instead). It's suggested to freeze it overnight before cutting it into seven layers. Then, it's iced with a combination of ingredients like butter, chocolate, powdered sugar, milk, and cream cooked over a double boiler. It's first frosted and cooled in the fridge or freezer before getting a second layer of chocolate glaze poured over the top. Finally, it's topped with chopped walnuts.

Barack Obama is a fan of all kinds of fruit pies, and apple pie is his favorite. Once the pastry chefs at the White House learned that Obama liked pies, they made loads of them. However, the president had to ask them to dial it down a bit because he was enjoying them too much and didn't want to gain weight from overindulging while in office between 2009 and 2017.

To accommodate the Obamas' desire for healthier food choices, the chefs tamped down their pie zeal. When they did make pies for the family, they worked toward making healthier ones. So, they often contained more natural sweeteners like honey (from the White House's bee hives), maple syrup, and agave nectar. Plus, they tended to contain more natural ingredients like fruit from the White House garden and lard or butter instead of chemical shortening for the crust.

The apple pie that the White House pastry chefs made for Obama had a flakey crust and tended to contain apples like Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and Honey Crisp, with only cinnamon as extra flavoring. In case you're wondering, Obama preferred to eat his pies plain instead of à la mode (with ice cream).

Thomas Jefferson wasn't the only president who preferred ice cream over other desserts. Donald Trump is an ice cream lover, too. During his tenure as president between 2017 and 2021, Trump became known as a lover of fast food, like pizza and McDonald's burgers and fries. With ice cream often on the dessert menu at fast food restaurants, it's not too surprising that ice cream is the dessert that comes out on top for Trump.

One of the perks of being president is that extra helpings can be yours if you want them. So, when Trump would get a dessert like chocolate cream pie served with ice cream, his staff knew that he didn't just want one scoop of ice cream; he wanted two. While ice cream in general is Trump's dessert of choice, he does have a favorite flavor. When given an option, he prefers cherry vanilla ice cream to other flavors.

Ice cream is also the favorite dessert for Joe Biden. According to The Hill, when Biden was vice president, he once opened up a speech by saying, "My name is Joe Biden, and I love ice cream. You all think I'm kidding — I'm not. I eat more ice cream than three other people you'd like to be with, all at once." Granted, the speech was at one of his favorite ice cream shops, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, but the sentiment remains.

During Biden's time as president, starting in 2021, he demonstrated that he likes all kinds of ice cream. When he visits Jeni's, he's been known to get a waffle cone filled with ice cream flavors like chocolate with peanut butter flecks and blackout chocolate cake. However, if you'd like to try Biden's favorite type of ice cream, it's chocolate chip. The White House stocks Häagen-Dazs vanilla chocolate chip ice cream for him. He also enjoys Graeter's Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, which is available in some grocery stores and can even be delivered to your doorstep.