Gallery: It's Decorative Gourd Season: 21 Recipes for Pumpkin Sweets

This is a spin on classic palmiers, made with a simple syrup that contains pumpkin puree and a sugar mixture laced with pumpkin pie spices. Palmiers are simple cookies, basically caramelized sugar and syrup baked into puff pastry. The pumpkin flavor is subtle and the spice is intense.

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[Photograph: Lauren Weisenthal]

The secret to this moist, fragrant pumpkin bread is crushed amaretti cookies. It's also the perfect way to use up leftover pumpkin puree.

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[Photograph: Carrie Vasios]

A sweet way to serve the classic autumn treat, these pops are ideal for crust lovers, providing a high crust-to-filling ratio. This also allows you to go a little sweeter with the filling: these substitut sweetened condensed milk for the more-frequently used evaporated milk, providing a deliciously rich, caramelly-tasting filling as a result."

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[Photograph: Jessie Oleson]

A crunchy chocolate cookie crust is filled with a creamy pumpkin mousse and topped with spiced cocoa whipped cream and shaved bittersweet chocolate. It's got the right black and orange color scheme for your Halloween party and as the ultimate hosting bonus, it can be made ahead.

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[Photograph: Yvonne Ruperti]

A full-sized cake form tribute to the Mellowcreme Pumpkin. The look may not be exact, but we don't think you'll mind when you taste it: made using a pumpkin cake generously coated in tinted cream cheese frosting, this is a highly delicious homage to a second-banana Halloween sweet.

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[Photograph: Jessie Oleson]

Normal soufflés will start with a béchamel or a pastry cream, but for this easy pared down version all you have do is whip up the egg whites, fold in the yolks, pumpkin, and maple, then bake."

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[Photograph: Kerry Saretsky]

This granola excels in milk, which really brings out the pumpkin flavor. The dried apples were an expected favorite, adding to this granola's classic "fall" taste that you'll want to eat all season.

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[Photograph: Carrie Vasios]

These soft, cakey cookies have a ton of pumpkin flavor thanks to the boosting effects of orange. Tart cranberries provide occasional bursts of tartness and nutmeg, notes of fall.

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[Photograph: Carrie Vasios]

Ginger snap and brown sugar crust and homemade candied nuts (with a thin coating of toasted sugar and spices that shatter at first bite) are what you can expect in this decadent dessert. You'd be a blockhead not to try it."

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[Photograph: María del Mar Sacasa]

This ice cream has just a hint of spice without verging too far into pumpkin pie territory. It's worth making with homemade pumpkin purée, which has a bright, sweet flavor, but canned pumpkin will still taste great."

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[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

This pie uses a stove-top cooked, and the cooked and cooled 'custard' has a smooth texture, somewhere between pudding and, surprisingly, a soft custard. While the filling requires no baking, it does need to chill overnight; so be sure to make it the day before."

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[Photograph: Elizabeth Barbone]

This dreamy pumpkin pie is smooth and creamy with a double booze infusion. There's a hint of bourbon in the filling, but since booze that is baked loses its edge, there's a maple bourbon mascarpone topping as well. The combination of the creamy filling and topping and a light layer of toasted pecans makes this pie the winner for adults this holiday season."

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[Photograph: Lauren Weisenthal]

The pumpkin puree lends a lightness to these cookies in addition to staving off the dryness that tends to plague traditional black-and-whites.

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[Photograph: Alexandra Penfold]

Use homemade pumpkin puree for this pie, which enhances the gorgeous, smooth texture and complex, spicy flavor. Best of all, the filling has just a hint of sweetness, all from brown sugar, so you won't get sweet-fatigue."

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[Photograph: Lauren Weisenthal]

These are pumpkinlicious, moist and spicy. The brandied raisins meld perfectly with the pumpkin flavor, and the crunchy, sugary pepitas give them just a little satisfying crunch."

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[Photograph: Lauren Weisenthal]

Bake up some delicious pumpkin cake directly in jars for contained, easy-to-ship parcels which can be topped with whipped cream or frosting when they've reached their destination, making for a sweet and thoughtful treat.

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[Photograph: Jessie Oleson]

Pumpkin butter on toast is always delicious, but there are many other ways to fill your fall days with this treat. Try it for breakfast stirred into plain yogurt or baked into granola. Or, blend it into a milkshake or maybe even marble it into your favorite coffee cake recipe.

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[Photograph: Kumiko Mitarai]

This has a straightforward custard as ice creams go: pumpkin purée, brown sugar, and tastes of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg. But it receives some definite personality from star anise and whiskey: rye for something spicy, bourbon for something more vanilla, or hey why not Scotch because it's your ice cream and you can do what you want. The amounts in the recipe are small, but their impact isn't.

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[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

The moisture of the pumpkin yields a cake that had a texture something like a baked pudding—very dense and flavorful. To keep things from getting too pumpkin-heavy, the cake is a carrot cake; the flavors and spices work beautifully with the pumpkin scent and flavor. It's even better when generously frosted and served with ice cream.

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[Photograph: Jessie Oleson]

Light, fluffy, and soft, these spiced pumpkin doughnuts make a perfect fall breakfast or even a non-traditional Turkey Day dessert.

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[Photograph: Alexandra Penfold]

This cake is made warm with allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. Freshly grated ginger cleanly cuts through and comes to the forefront of the cake. Along with bittersweet, heady molasses and pumpkin puree, this becomes something more than the run-of-the-mill dusty spice cake. It is much more nuanced, delicate, and decidedly grown up.

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[Photograph: María del Mar Sacasa]