18 Healthy Fall Dessert Recipes to Wrap up Your Meal in Cozy Style
Add a little cozy to your dessert course with these fall healthy baking recipes. Featuring apples, pumpkin, plums, and more, each of these desserts is low in calories and fat yet full of seasonal flavor. Warm up with one of these healthy fall dessert ideas that incorporate the produce stars and warm spices of autumn.
Apple-Toffee Tartlets
Refrigerated piecrust makes these fruity fall pastries a cinch. Shape the dough in muffin cups, then fill with fiber-rich apples and toffee pieces for a healthy fall dessert that can be made and baked ahead and frozen up to three months. Once you master the easy prep steps for this fast and fresh apple recipe, you might get inspired to try it other times of the year with whatever fruit is in season.
Cinnamon and Brown Sugar Custards
These cozy custards are made with an unexpected ingredient: carrots! Stick with us here—vegetable desserts can be just as tasty and seasonal as fall fruit ones. Remember carrot cake? Blend the vitamin-A-packed root vegetable in a food processor until smooth, then combine with four common pantry ingredients for an easy 130-calorie healthy fall dessert.
Spiced Molasses Cupcakes with Marshmallow-Cream Cheese Frosting
Take a couple of the flavors from your favorite s'mores recipe and tiptoe them into fall territory. Sticky-sweet molasses transforms ordinary cupcakes into a so-seasonal treat. Reduced-fat cream cheese and marshmallow creme keep the healthy fall dessert's tangy frosting fluffy and light. Sprinkle with cinnamon or cocoa powder (the latter to amplify the campfire-side flair).
No-Bake Peanut Butter Oat Bites
Seeking a last-minute healthy fall dessert recipe? Whip up a batch of these easy no-bake cookie balls. Creamy peanut butter helps bind dried fruit, chocolate pieces, and shredded coconut to rolled oats, which are rich in both fiber and protein.
Sour Cream-Pumpkin Bars
Pump up the flavor in your next round of bar cookies with (you guessed it!) canned pumpkin. These moist pumpkin bars incorporate whole wheat flour for added nutrients and fiber. Top with crunchy walnuts and heavenly browned butter frosting for a memorable fall healthy baking recipe you'll make time and time again all season.
Oatmeal Slices with Dates and Nuts
This slice and bake cookie recipe can be made up to three months ahead and frozen for any time you need a sweet snack. This fall cookie recipe calls for toasted pecans but you could easily swap in walnuts, chopped almonds, or peanuts.
Persimmon Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Slices of spice cake practically scream fall. This fall dessert recipe starts with a boxed cake mix that's dressed up with dried fruit and spices. Top the cake off with a cream cheese frosting flavored with vanilla.
Sourdough Discard Oatmeal Cookies
These chewy oatmeal cookies are filled with seasonal flavors like maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg. A handful of dried fruit (we like currents, cranberries, or raisins) helps coax even more sweetness out of the rolled oats.
Apple-Maple Snack Cake
A few things make this apple snack cake one of our favorite healthy fall dessert recipes. Fresh apples (try Braeburn) become soft and sweet when baked in a whole wheat cake batter. Round out the warm flavors with vanilla extract and apple pie spice.
Cranberry Twist Bread
This yeast bread recipe is equally delicious for dessert as it is for breakfast the next morning. Make it a healthy fall dessert by topping it with a homemade orange frosting or skip the drizzle and serve it with fruit and eggs for breakfast.
Cranberry-Hibiscus Babka
This healthy fall dessert is swirled with a tart cranberry sauce and topped with crunchy turbinado sugar. The result is a dessert bread that's ready to be sliced and served with coffee or tea.
Mini Chocolate Peanut Butter Pies
These rich chocolate peanut butter pies are the perfect bite. Top a rich chocolate cookie crust with creamy peanut butter mousse and finish with swirls of cocoa whipped cream. It doesn't get much better than that.
Forgotten Cookies
These light and airy "forgotten" cookies are filled with nuts and mini chocolate chips. They get their name from the way they're left in the oven overnight to finish cooking. The texture is similar to a meringue with a bit of chewiness.
Crinkle Cake
Crinkle cake is a shortcut dessert made with purchased phyllo dough and vanilla custard. The finished fall dessert is equal parts creamy and crispy. Finish with a sweet honey syrup before serving.
Apple Sheet Cake
This healthy fall dessert has earned rave reviews since we first published the recipe. As one BHG home cook shared, "Needed about 45 minutes baking time in my convection oven, and probably could have benefitted from 5 more minutes. Still wonderful, and I plan to make it again, as it was very easy to put together and satisfies deeply."
Pumpkin Cookies with White Chocolate Chips
Bake a batch of these pumpkin spice cookies and you'll have your new favorite fall dessert. White chocolate chips add the perfect amount of sweetness to the soft cookies. Make them ahead and freeze for up to 3 months.
Apple-Cranberry Braid
A simple no-knead bread dough forms the base of this fruit-filled dessert. Stuff the dough with sliced apples, cranberries, and almond paste. We'll walk you through how to create the braided shape, including a delicious sugared almond topping.
Baked Apple-Spice Donuts
All the best parts of apple pie are here—warm fruit, apple pie spice, and a touch of sweetness. Skip the crust and instead make these baked donuts. A bit of yogurt in the batter adds moisture and a little extra protein.