5 Best Vegan Desserts – Yummy Plant Based Recipes
Eating plant-based opens up the door to a wonderful world of innovative and inventive recipes, even when it comes to sweet treats. From breakfast, lunch, and dinner to snacks and desserts, there’s a myriad of tasty vegan-friendly foods to try. If you love getting creative in the kitchen, a plant-based diet will never hold you back. In fact, it just might do the opposite because you’ll learn how to craft delectable vegan cakes, vegan brownies, and even vegan ice cream, all without sacrificing taste.
One of the common misconceptions about a plant-based diet is that it forces you to miss out on those sweet treats that you always seem to be craving. This couldn’t be further from the truth! There are virtually endless vegan dessert recipes that are absolutely delicious, and many of them are simple enough for beginner bakers to try.
Eliminating ingredients like eggs and dairy doesn’t mean you can’t make great desserts. Instead, it points you towards the world of yummy alternative ingredients, which can get the job done just as well as their animal-derived counterparts. Just wait, because your mouth will be watering in moments.
In this post, we’ll be diving into the world of vegan desserts and discussing some of the best recipes we’ve found for yummy plant-based treats. Read on to get inspired!
1. Love & Lemons No-Bake Cookies
These scrumptious cookies are made with just a few simple ingredients, all of which are completely plant-based. There’s a good chance that if you bake occasionally, you’ve already got everything you need to make these yummy treats in your pantry!
Love & Lemons’ no-bake cookie recipe calls for creamy peanut butter, whole rolled oats, unsweetened cocoa powder, almond milk, coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. Instead of relying on table sugar for sweetness, these cookies get their sweet flavor from maple syrup, which is often used in vegan recipes as an alternative to honey. Oh, and did we mention that we have the perfect sugar-free maple syrup for you to use?
Prepping these cookies is super simple, and, as their name implies, there’s no baking required! Start by melting a ¼ cup portion of coconut oil in a medium-sized saucepan on the stove.
Next, combine a ¼ cup and a 2 tablespoon serving of peanut butter with 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, stirring these two ingredients into the melted coconut oil. This combination serves as the coating for the cookies. Yes, you read that right: these suckers are coated in chocolate because they’re just that good.
Once you’ve blended the chocolate and peanut butter, add in ¼ cup almond milk, ½ cup maple syrup, and ½ teaspoon vanilla, adding a pinch of salt if desired. Let this mixture boil on the stove for two minutes, then take it off the heat before moving on.
Next, it’s time to add in the oats, which are the recipe’s alternative for bakeable cookie dough. You’ll need 1 ½ cups of oats for 12 to 14 cookies. Mix the oats in with the chocolate and peanut butter, as well as the other ingredients. Once the oats are stirred in, scoop out the combined ingredients onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You can portion out cookies using a cookie scoop or scoop out approximately 2 tablespoons of ingredients for each.
Once the cookies are portioned out, all they need to do is cool for 30 minutes before they’re ready to eat! It’s that easy!
2. Minimalist Baker Coconut Ice Cream
This delicious recipe calls for coconut milk, vanilla bean, vanilla extract, cane sugar, and sea salt. Just five ingredients, and you’ll have the creamy, dreamy ice cream that you’ve been waiting for.
Here’s exactly what you’ll need:
- 2 cans of coconut cream or full-fat coconut milk. Cans should be 14 ounces each.
- ½ cup organic cane sugar. If desired, you can swap out the sugar with maple syrup or erythritol to make it keto-compatible.
- 1 pod of vanilla bean
- 2 tsp of vanilla extract
- A pinch of salt
You’ll also need an ice cream maker to successfully pull off this recipe, which is definitely worth the investment if you’re a plant-based eater with a sweet tooth. Ice cream makers can be as cheap as $70, and they can end up saving you a lot of money in the long run if you’re up for the adventure of DIYing your own dairy-free treats!
If you’re looking for a vegan ice cream substitute that doesn’t require all that technical equipment, you can make banana ice cream with nothing but a blender and a few easy-to-find ingredients. Add in melted chocolate or fruits like raspberries and blueberries for a truly healthy dessert that satisfies the ice cream monster inside you.
3. Nora Cooks 1-Bowl Vegan Blueberry Muffins
This simple and creative recipe uses just one bowl and a few easy ingredients. It’s the perfect recipe for a newcomer to vegan baking, and cleanup is easy as pie (or muffins).
The recipe calls for soy milk, which can be subbed for hemp, coconut, cashew, oat, or almond milk. You’ll also need a bit of apple cider vinegar, all-purpose flour, sugar or coconut sugar, baking powder, salt, cornstarch or tapioca starch, coconut oil, vanilla, and fresh blueberries. That’s all!
To begin, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and combine all of your dry ingredients in your bowl – 1 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 2 cups all-purpose flour. Then, mix 1 ¼ cups of your milk alternative and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in a separate cup to create a plant-based alternative to buttermilk.
Next, combine all of your wet ingredients and dry ingredients, adding in ⅓ cup coconut oil, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, as well as the plant-based buttermilk, to the dry ingredients in the bowl. Next, fold in the blueberries – 1 ½ cups.
Add these mixed ingredients to a muffin pan, filling up the cups in the pan until they are nearly full. Then, bake the muffins for around 25 minutes, waiting until they look golden brown. Let them cool for 5-10 minutes, and get ready to feast!
4. Tasty Vegan Apple Pie Recipe
Pie is undoubtedly one of the best desserts ever—we don’t make the rules. The combination of flaky crust with delicious fruit filling is irresistible, but it also often is made with sneaky non-vegan ingredients. Luckily, this recipe from Tasty doesn’t use anything animal-derived, and it’s absolutely heavenly.
The crust calls for:
- 2 ½ cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon organic sugar
- 1 cup vegan butter substitute
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 tablespoons of cold water
And the filling:
- 7 granny smith apples
- 2 cups organic sugar and 1 extra teaspoon
- 1 zested lemon
- ½ juiced lemon
- 5 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil and 1 extra teaspoon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 4 teaspoons cinnamon
For this recipe, you’ll be making your own crust, which can be a tricky feat for newcomers to baking. However, crafting crust at home is one of the few ways to make a vegan pie! You’ll get the hang of it in no time, and soon enough, you’ll be enjoying flaky, sweet-and-savory pie crust whenever you’d like.
5. Baker by Nature’s Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
These simple and delicious cookies take just 35 minutes to make, and they taste incredible. They’re made with coconut oil instead of butter, which eliminates one of the most common animal products used in desserts. The cookies are made with coconut milk, which replaces dairy milk and keeps the cookies vegan-friendly.
The recipe calls for vegan chocolate chips – 2 big cups of them! We highly recommend getting your chocolate for this recipe from MiiRO. Our delicious dark chocolate chips are vegan, low-sugar, low-carb, and high-protein, giving your desserts an extra nutritional boost.
Here’s everything else you need for this recipe:
- ½ cup coconut oil
- 1 ¼ cups light brown sugar (erythritol and monk fruit will work as well)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¼ cup coconut milk
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 and ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
To bake this recipe, you’ll need the oven preheated to 375 degrees, a large mixing bowl, a smaller mixing bowl, a whisk, a baking sheet, a spatula, and some measuring cups and spoons handy. Although you do need a few tools handy, it’s still an incredibly simple recipe that yields 16 cookies! You can share them with friends or keep them all to yourself—we promise that we won’t tell!
Most of the time spent on this recipe is when the cookies are either cooling or in the oven. That means you’ll have around 15 minutes to clean up and relax during baking. What could be better than that?
Conclusion
Vegans have a reputation for getting super creative in the kitchen, and you’re about to join those ranks. Eliminating animal products helps spark culinary innovation and invention, and these delicious vegan desserts are a testament to just how delish vegan desserts can be.
Don’t let anyone tell you that being vegan means you have to let go of your favorite desserts! There are plenty of ways to make everything you love – from cookies and muffins to ice cream – without the need for any animal-derived products.
If you’re a vegan baker yourself, MiiRO has a stacked lineup of ingredients that can help you out in the kitchen. Our delicious baking chips, chocolate bars, sugar-free maple syrup, and peanut butter cups make the perfect addition to any plant-based baker’s pantry. They’re low-sugar, keto-friendly, high-protein, and, of course, 100% compatible with a vegan diet!
Sources:
No Bake Cookies Recipe | Love & Lemons
Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream | Minimalist Baker
1 Bowl Vegan Blueberry Muffins | Nora Cooks
Vegan Apple Pie Recipe | Tasty
The BEST Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World! | Baker by Nature
