I love vegetables. Big arugula salads loaded with crunchy raw veggies, roasted broccoli and cauliflower sprinkled with melty cheese and spiralized zucchini pretending to be pasta drenched in pesto all appear in my dinner rotation most weeks. But I’m always looking for ways to eat more vegetables and to get my friends and family to join in on my #EatMoreVeg craze.
Let’s just admit it—sometimes the best way to do it is by getting a little sneaky and putting the veggies into replacements for your favorite carbs, or even better, tucking them into sweet desserts. Not only do desserts with hidden veggies help you get more vegetable servings into your day, it also keeps baked goods moist and sweet without adding tons of extra sugar.
Here are 9 ways you can turn vegetables into dessert:
1. Put potatoes into cupcakes
Blueberry Cupcakes
Mashed potatoes give Blueberry Cupcakes great texture, almost like pound cake.
2. Grate zucchini into your brownie batter
Dark Chocolate
Soon many of us will have zucchini bursting from the garden, left on the doorstep by neighbors or filling our CSA box. Turn them into Chocolate Zucchini Brownies. No one will ever know, promise.
3. Stir corn into ice cream
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Everyone loves sweet corn and ice cream in the summer. Sweet Corn Ice Cream combines the two!
4. Whip avocados into pudding
Chocomole Pudding
Creamy avocados make this dairy-free and vegan “Chocomole” Pudding from rock star Jason Mraz super-rich. Watch Jason Mraz whip this up at his house.
5. Stir carrots into your cookies
Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
A quick stir-in of grated carrots not only makes these easy Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies reminiscent of spicy carrot cake, it also adds sweetness and keeps these cakey cookies moist.
6. Beat beets into your cupcake batte
Chocolate-Beet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Beets act as a natural food dye, plus they bump up the fiber in Chocolate-Beet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.
7. Puree sweet potatoes into mousse
Chocolate-Sweet Potato Parfait
This healthy chocolate mousse recipe gets its body from sweet potato rather than eggs. Both the mousse and the meringue cookies can be made ahead of time, so all you have to do is assemble the parfaits when you’re ready for dessert.
8. Stir pumpkin into cake mix
Pumpkin Dump Cake
Dump cake might be the easiest dessert ever. This pumpkin version layers spiced canned pumpkin and a sweet cream cheese filling with organic cake mix dumped on top for a crisp crust.
9. Puree squash for your cheesecake
Squash Cheesecake Bars
Squash Cheesecake Bars get their luscious texture from pureed winter squash.
Blueberry Cupcakes
Blueberry Cupcakes
Dark Chocolate
Dark Chocolate
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Chocomole Pudding
Chocomole Pudding
Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
Chocolate-Beet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Chocolate-Beet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Chocolate-Sweet Potato Parfait
Chocolate-Sweet Potato Parfait
Pumpkin Dump Cake
Pumpkin Dump Cake
Squash Cheesecake Bars
Squash Cheesecake Bars
