7 Ideas for Healthy Desserts, Plus Ingredient Substitutions

A healthy dessert is not an oxy-moron. You can enjoy a sweet, satisfying treat after a meal without breaking the bank on calories or consuming too much fat or sugar.

To make dessert healthier, stick with whole ingredients and avoid processed treats. Make healthy substitutions for things like sugar and shortening. Moderation is important too. Enjoy that indulgent, sugary, high-fat dessert every once in a while.

How to Make Dessert Healthier

Yes, it is possible to enjoy dessert without completely wrecking your healthy eating plan. Moderation is most important, but you can also enjoy a treat regularly by making it healthier.

Healthy Desserts Have Less Sugar

There’s no way around the fact that sugar is a huge culprit in making dessert bad for you. The real issue is added sugar. An apple has sugar, but it also has fiber to mitigate a blood glucose spike that results from eating sugar. A piece of candy is basically just sugar. Reduce added sugar in desserts to make them healthier.

Avoid Saturated and Trans Fats

Aim to eat zero grams of trans fats and limit saturated fats, which contribute to high cholesterol levels, obesity, and heart disease. Replace high-fat ingredients, like cream or milk, with low-fat milk or plant-based milks.

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Make Your Own Desserts

When you make your own desserts, you control what goes into them. You can add less sugar, use sugar substitutes, or make the recipe vegan or gluten free. Save processed desserts for rare occasions.

Substitute Ingredients

You can find plenty of healthy, plant-based, or gluten or dairy-free dessert recipes, but you can also adapt recipes. Make some of these switches for a healthier treat:

• Use soy, oat, or almond milk instead of cow’s milk.

• Substitute applesauce, coconut oil, avocado, or vegan butter for butter or shortening. Keep in mind, though, that coconut oil is high in saturated fat.

• For an egg substitute, mix one tablespoon of ground flaxseed with 2 to 3 tablespoons of water.

• Replace some added sugar with applesauce, mashed banana, maple syrup, or dates.

• Replace milk or semisweet chocolate with dark chocolate, which has less sugar and more antioxidants.

• Substitute whole wheat flour for one-half to one-third of the white flour in a baked good recipe.

Always have these kitchen ingredients stocked so it’s easier to make healthy meals and snacks when a craving strikes.

Manage Your Own Health Goals

Ultimately, making dessert healthier is an individual effort. You may have a client cutting out all added sugar or another who is less worried about sugar but reacts badly to gluten in foods. For yourself, and for clients, choose desserts and ingredients that match your specific health goals.

Ideas for Healthy Desserts

If you feel lost at the idea of creating something healthy for dessert, try these ideas. They are simple recipes with few ingredients that will leave you satisfied.

Dark Chocolate

Just a square or too of dark chocolate is as simple as it gets for a healthy dessert. Dark chocolate provides iron, copper, zinc, magnesium, and flavanols. The latter are antioxidants that protect the heart, relax blood vessels, improve blood flow, and lower blood pressure.

For the most benefits from flavanols, choose 70% or higher dark chocolate. You can eat it plain or use it in recipes. Melt dark chocolate to dip fresh or dried fruit for a special dessert.

Yogurt Desserts

Nonfat Greek yogurt is a healthy kitchen staple. It is low in sugar and rich in protein and probiotics. Use it in dessert recipes to replace less healthy fats and for a richness and extra protein.

You can also make a simple, two-minute dessert just by dressing up a bowl of plain Greek yogurt. Add a drizzle of honey, some fresh fruits and nuts, and a sprinkle of granola for a delicious and filling dessert.

Banana Ice Cream

Bananas are great in dessert because they are sweet but also rich in fiber, potassium, antioxidants, and vitamins C and B6. A simple, tasty way to use bananas in dessert is to make an ice cream substitute.

Simply throw frozen bananas in a blender and whip into a soft-serve consistency. You can eat it that way or freeze again for a harder, scoopable ice cream.

Banana ice cream alone is delicious, but you can also get creative. Before the second freeze, mix in peanut butter or another natural nut butter and some chunks of dark chocolate. Add cocoa powder, coconut flakes, or nuts. You can also add healthy toppings after the second freeze. Try fresh strawberries, a little honey, or peanuts.

2-Ingredient Cookies

Skip to usual chocolate chip cookie. An alternate simple treat is a two-ingredient cookie that uses bananas. Mash two ripe bananas with a cup of quick oats. Drop onto a baking sheet as you would with any kind of cookie dough. Bake at 250 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.

As with banana ice cream, you can add mix-ins for variety and extra flavor: dark chocolate chips, walnuts, raisins and other dried fruit, coconut, or even pretzel chunks.

Baked Apple

A plain, raw apple isn’t the most exciting dessert, but baked, an apple becomes richer and sweeter, even without added sugar. Baking one is simple. Core the apple and stuff it with some healthy goodies, like walnuts, raisins, and cinnamon. Bake in a casserole dish at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Chia Seed Pudding

You can make several variations on pudding with a chia seed base. Chia seeds are nutritious—providing fiber, protein, calcium, manganese, magnesium, and lesser amounts of other minerals and vitamins.

The fiber in chia seeds is the key to making a rich pudding in one simple step. Just add a liquid to the seeds and let it interact with the fiber. Leave it for a couple hours or overnight, and you end up with a rich, creamy consistency. Here’s a basic healthy dessert recipe you can adapt with different ingredients:

• ¼ cup of chia seeds

• 1 cup of milk or milk substitute

• 2 teaspoons of a sugar or sugar substitute of your choice

Mix these together and let them sit until you get the right consistency. You can also add flavorings like vanilla or almond extract. Add cocoa powder for a chocolate pudding or blend in an avocado for extra creaminess and healthy fats. Top it with fruit, nuts, or granola.

Black Bean Brownies

Craving chocolate cake? Try a brownie instead. Take your healthy dessert cooking to the next level, not by removing unhealthy ingredients but by adding in nutritious, high-fiber black beans. You can find a lot of recipes online for this unusual but tasty dessert. Some are more traditional, while others are vegan or flourless.

Try this recipe that uses oats, beans, sugar substitutes and no flour for a vegan, gluten-free brownie that is still fudgy, chocolaty, and sweet. Even with sugar in a more traditional recipe, the fiber in the beans reduces the harmful sugar spike you get after eating most desserts.

Dessert can be part of a healthy lifestyle if you eat it in moderation and make some healthy substitutes. Help your nutrition clients make better choices about sweets and treats with these ideas.

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