19 Italian Potluck Ideas (Party Recipes)

Italian Potluck Ideas

If you want an exciting and delicious way to entertain, then an Italian potluck is the perfect option! Serving it at a gathering enables you to bring together friends, families, and colleagues to enjoy many Italian dishes.

With various dishes available, you can create your menu to host a perfect party, as there are different courses, from appetizers to main courses and desserts. You can design your perfect menu from the recipes given below.

From classic Italian dishes like lasagna to modern Italian cuisines, this article contains complete information about hosting an Italian potluck and filling the party with delicious recipes.

Stuffed Pasta Shells

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 60 minutes
  • Oversized pasta shells
  • Filled with spinach and ricotta cheese
  • Topped with marinara sauce

Stuffed pasta shells consist of three different types of cheese with the topping of marinara sauce. It is one of families’ most famous Italian dishes due to its simple and easy recipe. These pasta shells are guaranteed to be a hit among different dishes in a potluck, and people will keep filling their plates with them.

These stuffed shells taste like deep-dish pizza, and the ricotta cheese stuffing makes the taste even better. You can also use other different types of cheese and serve them with side salads or garlic bread to add to this fantastic recipe’s taste and flavor.

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Ricotta Cheesecake

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 1 hour 40 minutes
  • Cream cheese and ricotta cheese blend
  • Ground almond crust
  • Light and fluffy texture like a souffle

Ricotta cheesecake is one of the best desserts in taste and texture. It tastes divine and takes everybody’s attention due to its delightful look and savory aroma. It is not a pure Italian dessert but a blend of American style. Mixing cream cheese, ricotta cheese, and ground almond crust makes the flavor undeniable and irresistible.

This cake has become everybody’s favorite, and you will get many questions about its recipe. You can top it with icing of your favorite cream frosting or fresh strawberry syrup. You can also add fresh raspberry jam on the top to make it look appealing as the perfect potluck for dessert.

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Christmas Breakfast Casserole

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 1 hour
  • Cheesy ground pork sausage
  • Stuffed with cheddar cheese and mustard
  • Filled with white bread and creamy eggs

Christmas breakfast casserole is one of those recipes that everybody loves to cook on Christmas morning as potluck breakfast. It contains all the basic and simple ingredients, but they combine to give a perfect taste. You can also make the mixture the night before Christmas and put the dish in the oven on Christmas morning to save time. This recipe is rich in flavors and contains simple breakfast goods such as bread, eggs, cheese, and savory sausages. But they combine to give out a whole meal, and who does not like it on a special day of the year?

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Italian Ricotta CheeseLasagna

Ricotta Cheese Lasagna iamge

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 1 hour 45 minutes
  • Sweet Italian Sausages with pasta layers
  • Stuffed with ground beef and ricotta cheese.
  • Topped with mozzarella

Italian Ricotta Cheese Lasagna is one of the best Italian dishes admired by people all across the globe. Preparing a lasagna might be a little hectic, but when you serve this dish, all your hard work pays off due to the divine taste and game of flavors. Lasagna combines all the favorite ingredients; pasta, cheese, ground beef or turkey, cream, and tomato sauce with a topping of loads of cheese.

All these ingredients combine to give a perfect flavor; lasagna is unique to its selectiveness of ingredients and how different layers of pasta, sauce, and beef are baked together to give a perfect dish. You can serve this dish at parties, funerals, get-togethers, and even on Christmas as the best putlock for dinner.

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Italian Lemon Cookies

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 27 minutes
  • Powdered sugar coating
  • Filled with lemon juice, and butter
  • Soft and fluffy cookie with icing

Italian lemon cookies melt inside your mouth; if you like lemon flavor, these cookies will be your favorite. These cookies are light like air and easy to make in little time. If the fever of trying something new is getting on your nerves and you cannot decide what the Italian dessert should be, this recipe should be on your list due to its easy-to-make and delicious taste.

Potluck for breakfast feels incomplete without a lemon dessert on the table. These cookies’ softness and melting qualities make them unique, and they are the favorite of those who avoid sugary cookies.

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Easy Stuffed Shells

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 1 hour
  • Jumbo pasta shells
  • Filled with marinara sauce and ricotta cheese
  • Stuffed with smooth, creamy, cheesy filling with herbs

As the name suggests, easy stuffed shells contain a simple recipe. You can make them easily as potluck dinner for your family, and they are everyone’s favorite due to their smooth and creamy texture. They are usually served on different occasions like dinner, get together with colleagues, and Christmas.

They give out a perfect flavor as they contain 3 different types of cheese, then marinara sauce, and more cheese on the top to cover the whole dish. The golden-brown perfection of this recipe is what you are looking for. It is an easy meal that tends to please both children and adults.

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Chocolate Cannoli

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 50 minutes
  • Chocolate ricotta filling
  • Crunchy and delicious
  • Cannoli shell dipped in melted chocolate

Chocolate cannoli is one of the easiest and crunchiest Easter desserts filled with ricotta chocolate. It gives out a waffle but with better flavor due to the cannoli dipped in melted chocolate. Cannoli are excellent, and they contain fruit chunks, nuts, and chocolate; when there is ricotta dilled in them, they give out the best flavor due to the cannoli flavor.

It is easy to make the recipe, and you can serve this as a snack to the guests over tea or make it a quick dessert at a birthday party. This recipe’s cannoli and its flavor are the uniqueness of this dessert.

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Italian Sprinkle Cookies

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 40 minutes
  • Lemon and almond extract
  • The perfect flavor of egg, milk, and flour
  • Topped with colorful sprinkles

The Italian sprinkle cookies are also called Italian wedding cookies, and they are soft, delicious, and dipped into sweet syrup. They are topped with colorful sprinkles, making them look attractive and delicious. They are the showstopper cookies due to their soft and fluffy texture and the perfect size.

You can also coat these cookies with creamy vanilla and add the sprinkles to give another coating. The specialty of these cookies is that it is easy to make, and you can serve them on different occasions, and they are kids’ favorite due to their attractive colorful looks.

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Italian Flatbreads

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 45 minutes
  • Yeast-free soft dough
  • Dough stuffed with prosciutto and local cheese
  • Kneaded with virgin olive oil and water

Italian flatbreads are one of the simplest and lightest bread, and you can serve it with different stuffing as it works as the best wrap in different dishes like a tortilla. It would help if you only had a handful of ingredients to make this flatbread. The real art is in the kneading skills; if you know how to knead the flour without yeast with the perfect amount of olive oil, you can make the perfect flatbread. The pure flour filled with cheese makes this bread the best wrap for your recipes.

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Italian Sausage Casserole

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 50 minutes
  • Bulk Italian sausages
  • Penne pasta stuffed with beans and tomato sauce
  • Italian sausage and rice casserole with peppers

Italian Sausage Casserole adds sausages in different casseroles, and they all taste divine; you can add them to pizza, lasagna, and many other casseroles to enhance their taste. These sausages will add protein, savory flavor, spiciness, and herb taste to the casserole.

You can buy different types of sausages and fill these potluck casseroles with pasta, vegetables, and other sauces to make it a wonderful recipe. It is one of the best recipes served on occasions like Christmas. You can serve this casserole for breakfast to get the perfect amount of protein, veggies, and dairy from the same dish.

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Antipasto Kabobs

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 30 minutes
  • Easiest appetizers ever
  • Loaded with flavors of olives, tomatoes, and sausages
  • Layers of ingredients on to small wooden skewers

Antipasto kabobs are the easiest and quickest appetizers to serve at a party before the main course. This recipe contains loads of flavors of different ingredients, and the crowd will be more than happy to have them.

It contains different layers of ingredients, including tomatoes, olives, mozzarella balls, cubed salami, fresh basil, and marinated mozzarella balls, onto a small wooden skewer. Serve them in a dish with some biscuits or salads as an appetizer. They are easy to make, and all you need to do is to load these ingredients onto the skewers and serve them.

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Traditional Italian Lasagna

Classic Italian Lasagna

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 1 hour 40 minutes
  • Homemade beef ragu
  • Bechamel sauce layers
  • Silky pasta with mozzarella topping

Italian lasagna is famous, and there have been many modifications to these recipes, but the traditional Lasagna recipe remains the same, containing all the genuine ingredients. It contains ground beef, bechamel sauce, and silky past; to cover them all, there is a load of mozzarella cheese.

This Italian lasagna recipe is one of the comfort foods, and it is a favorite of every family due to its genuine flavor running through families. You can also add marinara sauce and boxed pasta sheets to save time, but if you want the authentic traditional look that is the essence of the lasagna, it is better to stick to the ingredients that make this recipe special.

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Italian Horn Cookies

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 45 minutes
  • Vanilla ice cream filling
  • Soft and fluffy texture filled with jam
  • Sweet and nutty in taste

Italian horn cookies are one of the best cookies to serve for putlock for brunch. These horn cookies have jam filling and a little bit of Nutella. They are simple buttery cookies and make the perfect snack or dessert. They are easy to make and use all the simple ingredients such as dough, jam, ice cream, and loads of powdered sugar. You can preserve these cookies and bake them for later. If the dough is soft and fluffy, your cookies will come out soft and perfect in texture.

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Coconut Italian Cream Cake

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 2 hours
  • Creamy cheese frosting
  • Heavily whipped cream
  • Shredded coconut and toasted pecans

The Coconut Italian cream cake recipe is one of the desserts to serve at special events and on birthdays. It has a perfect blend of cream cheese with shredded coconut. The frosting of heavily whipped cream adds to this cake’s look and flavor. It is not a pure Italian cake, but it has some southern cake addition to it. This recipe is traditional and contains a perfect combination of butter and shortening. When butter and shortening combine, they give a better-complemented flavor, which is the specialty of this cake.

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Chocolate Cannoli Cake

What’s Special?

  • Total time Taken: 50 minutes
  • A moist and decadent cake
  • Rich chocolate cake layers
  • Chocolate mascarpone filling with chocolate chips

Chocolate cannoli cake is one of the best cakes to use as a dessert on occasions such as birthday parties and family gatherings. This cake gives out a perfect definition of what a chocolate cake is. It contains chocolate mascarpone and chocolate chip filling to add a perfect chocolate flavor to this cake. It is famous for its multiple layering and soft sponge cake and chocolate cream icing with chocolate chips attached to the lower outer boundaries of this cake.

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Four-Cheese Sausage Rigatoni

Four-Cheese Sausage Rigatoni

What’s Special?

  • Total time: 1 hour 5 minutes
  • A creative twist on a classic Italian pasta
  • Best for a crowd, family gatherings, and celebrations

Hearty pasta, that too with lots of cheese, and baked to perfection! Sounds like a foodie’s dream coming true. It’s kind of a lasagna, but with a different type of pasta, and flavored with sausages. It is a people’s meal, so make this comfort food at any party to make people go crazy!

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Italian Brunch Torte

Italian Brunch Torte

What’s Special?

  • Total time: 1 hour 50 minutes
  • The best idea for breakfast and brunch
  • Can be served warm or cold

The breakfast and brunch potluck parties are somewhat tricky to plan. So I try to bake new types of casserole dishes, and this Italian-style Torte is one of them. You can add any type of meat or deli, but be sure to use fresh baby spinach for a classic taste. Serve with roasted asparagus sticks.

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Caprese Salad Kabobs

Caprese Skewers

What’s Special?

  • Total time: 10 minutes
  • A vegetarian side dish
  • So easy, even kids can make these

Ditch those regular vegetable platters, and ask your kids to grab some skewers. Get your favorite veggies i.e. baby tomatoes or bell peppers, and skew them along with mozzarella or feta cheese. It’s so easy you can even leave it entirely to your kids.

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Herbed Bread Twists

Herbed Bread Twists

What’s Special?

  • Total time: 40 minutes
  • Easy-to-make breadstick recipe
  • A side that goes with any main meal

No potluck is complete without some bread and this breadstick recipe is not to miss. Seasoned with herbs and shaped in a twist, this breadstick is soo good and fresh I sometimes eat it with a cheesy dip and never stop.

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Other potluck recipes you may like:

Italian Potluck Ideas

19 Must-Try Italian Potluck Dishes to Share

Adalynn Ward
If you want an exciting and delicious way to entertain, then an Italian potluck is the perfect option! Serving it at a gathering enables you to bring together friends, families, and colleagues to enjoy many Italian dishes.
5 from 8 votes
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 6 people

Ingredients

  • Stuffed Pasta Shells
  • Ricotta Cheesecake
  • Christmas Breakfast Casserole
  • Cheese Lasagna
  • Italian Lemon Cookies
  • Easy Stuffed Shells
  • Chocolate Cannoli
  • Italian Sprinkle Cookies
  • Italian Flatbreads
  • Italian Sausage Casserole
  • Antipasto Kabobs
  • Traditional Lasagna
  • Italian Horn Cookies
  • Coconut Italian Cream Cake
  • Chocolate Cannoli Cake
  • Four-Cheese Sausage Rigatoni
  • Italian Brunch Torte
  • Caprese Salad Kabobs
  • Herbed Bread Twists

How to Make?

  • Select any one dish from these Italian potluck ideas and open it on a new tab.
  • Note down all the ingredients that you need for the dish.
  • Make sure that all the ingredients must be fresh.
  • Follow the instructions to make your favorite dish.
  • I hope you have made a dish that you want to make. Don't forget to give us your feedback.

Nutrition

Serving: 1dishCalories: 235kcal
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Hello!! My name is Adalynn I love to eat, travel, and eat some more! I am married to the man of my dreams and have a beautiful little girl whose smiles can brighten anyone’s day!