Ina Garten’s Favorite Make-Ahead Desserts for Valentine’s Day

There’s something especially sweet about sharing a luxurious dessert with a loved one on Valentine’s Day. While you might have your sights set on a home-cooked romantic dinner, there’s plenty of reason to add a tasty dessert to your Valentine’s Day menu—especially since the holiday is synonymous with candy hearts and boxes of chocolates.

But if you’re spending Valentine’s Day prepping and cooking a delicious meal, like Scallop Risotto with Brown Butter & Parmesan or Stuffed Lobster Tails, you may not want to add dessert-making to your holiday to-do list. Thankfully, Ina Garten has shared a few of her favorite Valentine’s Day desserts that can be made ahead of time.

In her Substack newsletter, Garten answered an important V-Day question in her “Ask Ina” column. “I’m having a Valentine’s Day dinner, and I don’t want to spend Saturday focused on dessert,” a follower explained. “What’s a special dessert I can make or prepare ahead?”

For anyone who wants to get Valentine’s Day dessert ready ahead of time, Garten offered two suggestions: Chocolate Ganache Cake or Panna Cotta with Fresh Raspberry Sauce.

“Two of my favorite things to serve together are raspberries and cream, and they happen to match the colors of Valentine’s Day,” wrote Garten. “Panna cotta and raspberry sauce are both so easy to make. The sauce can be stored in the fridge for up to a week, and the panna cotta needs to be prepared the day before, so it has time to set overnight.”

Garten’s panna cotta is easy to make. Simply combine ingredients like gelatin, heavy cream, milk and Grand Marnier, heat the mixture and pour it into glass serving bowls to set overnight. The four-ingredient raspberry sauce combines fresh raspberries, sugar, raspberry jam and framboise liqueur to make a colorful, flavorful topping for that creamy panna cotta.

As for the chocolate cake, the recipe utilizes familiar ingredients like Hershey’s chocolate syrup and instant coffee granules. “You can make the chocolate cake a couple of days in advance, cool it, wrap it well in plastic wrap and refrigerate,” wrote Garten. “Chocolate ganache is just chocolate and heavy cream, heated together over a double boiler. Be careful that you take it off the heat as soon as the chocolate is melted, or it will taste burnt.”

If you’re concerned about overcooking your ganache, just try doing it over low, slow heat. It may take a bit longer to melt, but you’re unlikely to overdo it.

“You can make the ganache right after dinner and simply pour it on,” Garten wrote. “It’s actually easier to ganache a cold cake; just don’t refrigerate it after the cake is ganached.”

Another familiar brand makes it into Garten’s chocolate cake recipe: Häagen-Dazs. “I like to serve a slice on a plate with crème anglaise, but here’s my trick,” she offered. “Vanilla ice cream is essentially crème anglaise that’s been frozen, so I defrost a pint of Häagen-Dazs to make the rich vanilla sauce.”

This isn’t the first Valentine’s Day recipe Garten has shared with followers. A few years back, the Barefoot Contessa shared that she likes to entertain on V-Day and often makes a fig-and-cheese toast recipe for her guests that sounds pretty amazing, too.

Whether you’re starting or ending your Valentine’s Day meal with one of Garten’s recipes, it really doesn’t seem like you can go wrong by following her lead. After all, nothing says “I love you” like cheese and bread (or sweet after-dinner bites).