It’s a Sweet Week for Non-Dairy Desserts & Sweet Potato Cupcakes

It’s a Sweet Week for Non-Dairy Desserts & Sweet Potato Cupcakes

Contributed by Shannon Sarna, blogger and content editor at The Nosher.

I hate pareve desserts. Hate. Despise. Abhor. Loathe. Detest. Any other synonyms I missed?

In my culinary endeavors, I am first and always a baker. I love using butter, heavy cream and buttermilk whenever possible. So pareve baking is truly the worst challenge with which I have to contend as a kosher cook.

photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna
photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna

But in my never-ending quest to create pareve desserts that don’t “taste pareve” I have a few tried-and-true, quality nondairy desserts that always satisfy. And when someone takes a bite and says incredulously, “this is pareve?” I know I have done my job well.

When I test out pareve dessert recipes, the number one thing I look for is minimal alterations. You will never find me making a pareve cheesecake dessert or something that would require more than 1-2 ingredient swaps. Breads and cakes that use water-rich vegetables like carrots, zucchini and sweet potatoes in particular produce a very moist result. .

Here are some of my favorite parave dessert recipes:

photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna
photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting,  Recipe BELOW. Click here for Toasted Marshmallow Frosting.

Hershey’s Chocolate Cake  Click here for recipe. To make this cake pareve just substitute vanilla almond milk or coconut milk for the regular milk the recipe calls for.  I recommend using Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder. It will not come out the same without a deep, rich cocoa powder.

Citrus Angel Food Cake from Zoe Bakes, Click here for recipe.

Olive Oil Chocolate Mousse from the New York Times, Click here for recipe.

Zucchini Bread from Food and Wine, click here for recipe. 

photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna
photo courtesy of Shannon Sarna

Note from Liz:

The power of social media never ceases to amaze and thrill me. I “met” Shannon through The Nosher, a great resource about Jewish food on My Jewish Learning. After following each other on twitter and FB for a good few months, we finally met for real over late afternoon tea and macarons on a frigid day in NYC.  A mutual friend, who first told me that I just HAD to meet Shannon, joined us for our first cup. We had lots to talk about. I felt relieved to have more than 140 characters in which to share all that excites us in the Jewish food world.  And I’m grateful to friends and readers who go out of their way to connect like-minded eaters.

I was honored to be highlighted in a Blogger Profile on Nosher, here.

13 Comments

  1. I am always on the search for a new parve dessert! I cant wait to try these! I always find myself serving the same thing! I recently came accross kimkushner.com and found a few keepers! Cant wait to try these!

  2. ALl of your recipes sound yummy! One of my pet peeves is when recipes call for “ingredients based on size”.. 2 medium sweet potatoes??? Does that come out to 2 cups? (See this a lot with banana bread recipes… 3 medium sized bananas! 🙁 ) Please give me an idea as to how many cups or oz. when making your sweet potato cupcakes. Thanks! Nice article Nice pics!

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