20 Low-Fat Desserts That’ll Actually Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth

Low-Cal Brownies

When you want a low-fat chocolate dessert, you can still indulge in a fudgy brownie. These are made without butter or oil, but you won’t find anything unusual.

The brownie batter is a quick blend of Greek yogurt, milk, cocoa powder, and an egg. Then there’s oats as a wholesome alternative to all-purpose flour.

Ingredients

Skinny Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars

Cheesecake meets lemon bars in this healthy dessert. They both use graham cracker crust, so it makes sense to combine the two for this epic low-fat cheesecake bar. And they’re easy to make.

It just requires some mixing, assembly, and time in the oven. The hardest part is waiting for them to cool down before they can be devoured.

Ingredients

Grapefruit Yogurt Cake

You don’t even need a baking dish to have an amazing breakfast cake at home. This one not only tastes like grapefruit, but it’s baked and served right in the peel.

To make the large citrus into a container for the healthy cake batter, slice off the top, and scoop out the insides with a spoon. Once cooled, top with more Greek yogurt and a drizzle of honey.

Ingredients

Zucchini Donuts with Vanilla Espresso Glaze

Donuts may seem high in fat. But if they’re baked instead of fried, each donut can have just a few grams. This low-fat donut also has zucchini in the batter for a boost of vitamins.

If you prefer a low-sugar glaze, replace some or all of the powdered sugar with vanilla protein powder.

Ingredients

Two-Ingredient Banana Bread Cookies

These vegan cookies can even be turned into a gluten-free variety, but that’s not the reason to make them. Anyone who loves bananas will want to eat these, especially since you only need two kitchen staples to make the cookie dough.

To add another dimension of flavor without extra ingredients, roast the bananas and cool them down before baking. But if you do have time to consider mix-ins, try raisins, walnuts, chocolate chips, or just a splash of vanilla extract.

Ingredients

Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Protein Blondies

These healthy baked bars are studded with chocolate, so following a low-fat diet won’t feel like a sacrifice. Even with almond meal and egg yolks, they manage to have less than 5 grams of fat per square.

You can choose to cut these into larger pieces, making nine pumpkin blondies instead, and they’ll still offer great nutrition with minimal sugar and nearly 10 grams of protein apiece.

Ingredients

Low-Fat Carrot Cake with Cottage Cheese Icing

Carrot cake is usually served with a rich icing made from cream cheese. But in this case, it’s lightened up with cottage cheese and Greek yogurt.

Although both kinds of fresh cheese come in different milk-fat percentages, they have totally different macros. Cream cheese is the denser of the two, with over twice as many calories per serving.

Ingredients

Chocolate-Stuffed Raspberries

This easy low-fat dessert is so extremely simple, you’ll be shocked you haven’t tried it before. All you need is a bowl of fresh raspberries and a bag of chocolate chips.

Even if you eat the whole pint of stuffed berries, this makes a great low-calorie sweet snack. That’s a lot of fresh fruit, but only a handful of chocolate chips – about 1/3 of a full-size chocolate bar.

Ingredients

Low-Fat Mango Pudding

There are some puddings, like chocolate and vanilla, that you can get away with making from a box or even with whey protein powder. But when it comes to fruit flavors, you’re going to be missing out on a lot without using fresh ingredients.

This no-cook pudding has a mix of mango and Greek yogurt. To thicken it up, agar powder – derived from seaweed – is dissolved in boiling water and stirred into the pudding for a texture similar to creamy Jell-o.

Ingredients

Deconstructed Chocolate-Dipped Apple

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but nobody said you have to eat it plain. This snack takes inspiration from candied apples – but without the candy. Instead there’s cacao nibs, hemp, and PB2.

For a version with no added sugar, only nutrient-dense ingredients, use unsweetened toasted coconut instead of shredded.

Ingredients

Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake

It’s hard to believe this lean chocolate cake has only a gram of fat. And if you use an alternative sweetener like erythritol, it can be sugar-free too with even fewer calories. You can actually slash them in half for about 75 calories per serving.

Ingredients

Chocolate Blueberry Cake

This may look like an ordinary chocolate cake, but there’s a surprising ingredient in place of the oil or butter. Instead of using bananas or applesauce as healthy fat substitutes, this recipe includes blueberries. That makes an amazing low-fat cake that tastes decadent, especially with a touch of balsamic vinegar.

Ingredients

PB&J Protein Blondies

Turn a go-to sandwich into a sweet protein treat. With a mix of peanut butter and PB2, this healthy blondie has over twice as much protein as fat. Plus, a third of the flour has been replaced with a combo of casein and whey.

Ingredients

Plum Sponge Cake

A classic sponge cake only requires three ingredients: flour, eggs, and sugar. Since there’s no oil or butter, it has a lighter, somewhat springy texture.

What it’s often missing is much flavor, which is why sponge cake is either soaked in syrup (or rum) and covered in whipped cream. This recipe adds plums to the cake batter for a delicious cake, and if you want to incorporate more fresh fruit, add cherries to the filling in the middle.

Ingredients

Pina Colada Ice Cream

Healthy banana ice cream made with whole fruit, not heavy cream, is the ultimate low-fat dessert.

Bananas are a naturally fat-free food, so if you make one-ingredient ice cream with them, you’re just eating frozen fruit. Even if you mix in coconut, as in this recipe, the healthy ice cream alternative will have only a few grams of fat per serving.

Ingredients

Pie Crust with Beans

If you want to make a low-fat pie, you need to start from the bottom up. Pastry dough is usually just flour and butter, so unless you want to go with graham cracker crust, a healthy pie requires out-of-the-box thinking.

This low-fat pie crust uses a can of beans to replace most of the fat and all of the flour, so then you just need a couple tablespoons of oil.

Ingredients

Baked Rice Pudding

There are quite a few recipes for protein rice pudding, and while they’re tasty with great macros, they don’t nail the custardy texture. For a low-fat pudding that’s rich and decadent, try this baked version.

Since it’s made in the oven instead of on the stove, the pudding develops a natural caramel flavor as the top browns.

Ingredients

Greek Cream Cheese Panna Cotta

With a smart combo of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese, this creamy panna cotta only has a trace of fat.

To round out the rich flavor, top it with your favorite jam. Or get a true taste of the Mediterranean by making Greek spoon sweets, a kind of fruit preserve made from apricots, pomegranate, figs, or even watermelon rind.

Ingredients

Chocolate Chip Pavlovas with Raspberries & Apricots

Meringue is made from egg whites, so it’s great for low-fat desserts. Luckily it’s versatile and can be made into cookies, pies, or the base of an impressive dessert like a pavlova.

What makes them great is the toppings, and the sky’s the limit. Go for something that offers a different texture than the crisp meringue, like fresh fruit or creamy lemon curd.

Ingredients

Raw Apple Truffles

Most truffles are made of chocolate, butter, and heavy cream. This dessert takes things in a different direction, and you don’t have to melt anything at the stove.

Three kinds of fruit make up the base of this raw vegan dessert: apples, dates, and raisins. And instead of cocoa powder, these fat-free truffles can be coated in chopped almonds or walnuts.

Ingredients