Long winter evenings are unbearable without something sweet and tasty to put you in a good mood. And what can be better than some home-made 3 Vegan-Friendly Sweets that are not only delicious but also healthy and beneficial to your body? Below you will find three quick recipes for vegan desserts that are sugar-free, dairy-free, and, of course, gluten-free, are easy to make and require no baking!

The best thing about plant-based desserts is that they can be equally enjoyed by anybody who is vulnerable to sweets, no matter what their eating habits are. Let’s see what you can do to treat your friends and family (and yourself in the first place) and make some nutritious goods!

Chocolate Cups with Peanut Butter

While well-known Reese’s peanut butter cups are exceptionally high in sugars and are more likely to harm than satisfy your body, you have an option to make some yourself. It will allow you to control the amount and quality of the ingredients you use and will set you free from the feeling of guilt!

For chocolate cups, you will need:

• 3/4 of a cup of cocoa powder;
• 3/4 of a cup of melted coconut oil;
• 2 tbsp of maple syrup (or another sweetener of your choice);
• 3/4 of a cup of peanut butter (or another nut butter of your choice);
• vegan white chocolate chips (those can be difficult to find, so you may want to follow this vegan white chocolate recipe for home-made chocolate chips)
• coarse sea salt.

Whisk together cocoa, coconut oil, and sweetener to get a dark chocolate base for your cups. Then, brush each baking cup in a mini muffin tin with a thick layer of your vegan chocolate, and add about two tsp of nut butter into each cup. You can top your cups with remaining chocolate and add some optional toppings – we prefer vegan white chocolate chips and sea salt for the taste refraction. It will take about an hour to freeze, and then they are ready to be enjoyed. Yup, that simple and you can make your own 3 Vegan-Friendly Sweets.

Chocolate Truffles

Rich in chocolate, sweet, with a slight bitterness, a great aroma, and a delicate texture — these chocolate truffles will appeal to the sweet tooth of any age. You do not have to be a pastry chef to cook them because there are only two ingredients (300g of dates and 75g of cocoa mass) in the composition and only three steps to make!

1. Grind the cocoa mass and melt it in a water bath. Wash the dates and remove the skin and seeds. It is better to use soft dates, as they are easy to peel, so you will not need to soak them in water overnight. It is an additional plus because the excess liquid can interfere with further cooking and change sweets’ taste.
2. Add the dates and melted cocoa mass in a blender, and mix them until they become a homogeneous mass. If there is no blender, you can mash the dates with a fork and mix with melted cocoa. The consistency will not be so plain, but it will still be delicious.
3. You can put the resulting mass in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to harden a little, or you can immediately start forming candies. Ready-made sweets can be stored in the freezer – they do not become very hard, conversely, they gain the desired consistency.

Later you can roll each candy in a topping (cocoa powder, coconut flakes, grounded nuts, etc.) to give them a more aesthetic and delightful look. Viola!

Apple Marmalade with Turmeric and Ginger

Vegan apple marmalade with turmeric is not a traditional sweetness for tea, but a real home-made dietary supplement. Turmeric is a superfood with high anti-inflammatory properties that helps prevent and overcome different diseases, making those sweets perfect for colder months.

For this dessert, you will need:

• 230g of unsweetened apple sauce;
• 150ml of water;
• 2 tsp of agar-agar;
• 4 tbsp of lemon juice;
• 8g of turmeric powder;
• half a tsp of ginger;
• vanilla extract to taste;
• sweetener of your choice to taste.

Mix cold water and agar-agar in a saucepan with a thick bottom, then put it on medium heat. Cook, constantly stirring, for 2-3 minutes after boiling. The liquid should thicken but not stick to the walls of the saucepan. Add all the other ingredients to the thickened liquid and warm until it boils again, and keep stirring thoroughly. At this stage, you will need to try the marmalade and add sweetener, ginger, lemon juice accordingly to your taste – you may need more of these ingredients than indicated in the recipe to make them taste more intensively.

Before you pour the marmalade into the molds, you need to make sure that it will harden as it should. Pour a small amount into a cup and put it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. If the marmalade has cooled and remains not dense enough, you need to add more agar-agar and repeat the heating with stirring.

After reaching the correct consistency, you need to transfer the marmalade mass to a pastry bag and pour the marmalade into silicone molds for sweets or ice cream. If you don’t have them, you can pour the marmalade into a rectangular container and leave it to cool down. When it is ready, you can remove your apple marmalade from molds and cut it into smaller pieces if needed. Enjoy!

Conclusion

Perhaps the main advantage of vegan desserts is that they are less time-consuming to make. They also open up many alternatives and substitutes, such as plant-based types of milk or sweeteners and oils. It allows you to adjust each recipe to your taste and bring your favorite flavor into it.

Another benefit is that you can recreate your favorite store-bought candies at home, using healthy fats, making them richer in protein, not sugar. It is time to make your dessert a full-fledged boost of energy, not a guilty pleasure.