10 Vegan Dessert Recipes to Try This Month While Social Distancing
Once you get bored of feeding your sourdough starter everyday.
Whether you’ve reorganized your entire house, video chatted with friends, or spent hours watching Tiger King, chances are you’re still on the hunt for more things to do during self quarantine. One thing we often don’t have a lot of time to do during a normally hectic week? Baking.
And not just any type of baking: vegan baking. To help you get started, we put together a list of vegan dessert recipes you can experiment with. Whether you prefer cookies or cake, this list has it all. Some recipes may not even require an oven.
Photo via Take a Megabite
1. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
This vegan version of chocolate chip cookies is pretty similar to a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe, except it uses olive oil instead of butter and maple syrup instead of heaping amounts of sugar. For a salty-sweet cookie, finish them with a pinch of kosher salt on top.
Photo via Nora Cooks
If you’re craving chocolate cake, this is the perfect vegan option. Even the frosting is vegan—made with almond milk and vegan butter but still fluffy like standard frosting. If desired, you can use the batter to make cupcakes. Fill the liners halfway and the batter should yield about 24 cupcakes.
Photo via Mimi Newman
In addition to being vegan, these blondies are also gluten-free. The recipe uses Bob’s Red Mill Paleo flour, which is a combination of almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot starch, and tapioca flour. When mixing everything, be sure to mix the wet ingredients separately from the dry ingredients.
Photo via Veggie Jeva
4. Vegan Cookie Dough Cheesecake
This no-bake recipe uses cashews to create a creamy, cheese-like texture. If you don’t have a food processor and only have a blender or a smaller single-serve blender, you may have to break things up into batches. If the ingredients stick to the side, stop blending and pause to scrape down the sides.
Photo via Namely Marley
There are two options to make the filling for these lemon bars. One option uses tofu for firmness and nutritional yeast flakes for color. The other uses non-dairy milk and turmeric for color. If you can find silken tofu, that’s the best option for a creamy and smooth filling.
Photo via Love and Lemons
6. Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars
Peanut butter, almond flour, and chocolate chips make the base layer of these bars, while the creamy chocolate top is made with dates and cacao powder. Because these bars are no-bake, they can last longer than standard baked bars. Keep a batch in your freezer for future snacking.
Photo via Chocolate Covered Katie
This recipe is extremely versatile, which makes it perfect for quarantine baking. You can use any type of flour, including all purpose, spelt, or whole wheat pastry flour and either applesauce, oil, or butter for the fat. However, you should not use a sugar-free sweetener because it won’t feed the yeast.
Photo via Simply Plant Based Kitchen
This carrot cake uses a lot of natural sweeteners, such as dates, raisins, and ripe banana. To shred the carrots, you can use either a cheese grater or a food processor or blender. If you have any carrots left over, you can save them for salads or other meals instead of throwing them out.
Photo via The Whole Daily
9. Vegan Double-Chocolate Brownies
Almond butter and applesauce give these brownies their creaminess. You can stick with regular chocolate brownies, or try adding some peppermint extract or instant coffee for flavored brownies. The longer you bake the brownies, the less chewy they become, so aim for around 12 minutes of bake time.
Photo via Minimalist Baker
Vegan butter is the best option for the fat in these—coconut oil will not yield the same result. The recipe also uses aquafaba, which is the liquid left behind in a can of chickpeas. If you don’t have a can of chickpeas to use, you can substitute in pumpkin purée.
