The Best THM Friendly Dessert Recipes - Briana Thomas (2024)

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When asked to name my top 5 dessert recipes, I quickly realized that narrowing my favorites down to just 5 would be pretty much impossible, but I did create a list of my top 20. 😛 These recipes are MY OWN personal favorites, not necessarily the most popular dessert recipes on my website, although many of these would make that list too. So here you have it – the best THM friendly dessert recipes! (in my very humble opinion *cough*)

The Best Healthy Potluck Desserts

When making desserts for church potlucks or family gatherings where not everyone is on board with healthy eating and used to alternative flours and sweeteners, I gravitate towards desserts like cheesecakes that don’t rely on a large bulk of alternative ingredients. The texture of alternative baked goods can take some getting used to, so something like a cheesecake, ice cream, or cookie bars that have a thin crust and a topping of some sort are generally easier to get past the general public than something like cake. As you’ll notice from the list in this post, these are actually the types of recipes I prefer myself!

LOW GLYCEMIC SWEETENER TIPS:

• Less concentrated is generally more palate friendly. THM Gentle Sweet is perfect for people who are just coming off of sugar!
• However, the more concentrated sweeteners are usually more budget friendly. Since I don’t mind a little stevia, I usually use THM Pure Stevia Extract Powder and THM Super Sweet Blend in my recipes.
• Don’t know how to convert from one sweetener to another? Always, always, always sweeten to taste to get a result that you’re happy with! Taste buds vary A LOT when it comes to alternative sweeteners. Find what YOU like! I personally don’t like as much sweetener as most other folks because it leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth, so when making someone else’s recipes I usually decrease the sweetener amount. Start small, then taste and add more until it tastes good to you. You can also use this sweetener conversion chart to help estimate how much sweetener you’ll need in comparison to another sweetener.
• Remember that sweetness will decrease a bit with baking.
• An extra pinch of salt can help balance out a stevia flavor.
• Desserts made with alternative flours and sweeteners typically taste better after overnight refrigeration. This improves the texture and gives the sweetness some time to “mellow out.”
• Less concentrated sweeteners pair better with chocolate and coffee (bitter flavors) than stevia does, but stevia does pretty well sweetening fruity or cream cheesy stuff. I generally use stevia to sweeten things like yogurt and shakes and use THM Super Sweet Blend for baking.
• For ice cream I prefer to use xylitol (or THM Gentle Sweet that contains xylitol)because of its effect on texture and freezing properties of ice cream. You can read more about that HERE.

Desserts in Moderation

Stuff like cheesecake is generally fairly calorie dense, so I don’t keep it around on the regular because I personally have to be careful with heavy desserts or else I start gaining weight, even if it’s all sugar free and THM friendly. Probably has something to do with my lack of portion control…. I keep these desserts for special occasions or stick to small portions and try to give some of the dessert away. Back when I lived at home with my family and my mom and sister were around to help eat stuff, this wasn’t an issue…haha. My husband likes dessert, but not all the time, and in fairly small doses. He’s a good influence on me. 😉

Some of my favorite lower calorie “desserts” include

• fresh fruit! (THM E)
• sourdough or sprouted toast with a smidgen of butter and some all fruit jam (THM E)
• plain rice cakes with a smidgen of natural peanut butter and some all fruit jam (THM E)
• apple with low fat peanut butter made from defatted peanut flour
• low fat cottage cheese with THM Super Sweet Blend and cinnamon (THM FP)
• low fat cottage cheese or Greek yogurt with frozen berries and THM Super Sweet Blend (THM FP)
• sugar free hot chocolate (THM S or FP)
• celery with natural peanut butter and some sugar free chocolate chips (THM S) – I do try to watch my peanut butter intake because it’s really calorie dense. Peanut butter made with defatted peanut flour could work here too to lower calories and increase protein.
• cottage cheese blended with frozen fruit or berries and sweetener, like Trim Healthy Mama’s Cottage Berry Whip or this Mango Soft Serve for One (which is a THM E)

Don’t forget to add protein if the dessert doesn’t include some already. I’ll tack these desserts onto the end of a meal that includes protein or enjoy with some Greek yogurt or cottage cheese (low fat in a THM E or FP setting) for a desserty snack. Or pair with a drink that contains collagen or whey protein powder.

Want to browse more goodies?

• all my dessert recipes

• all my ice cream recipes

• all my drink/shake recipes

• Briana’s Baking Mix Recipe

Top 5 Cookbook Exclusive Desserts

Bri’s Best Fudgy Brownies

These took a lot of work to get right. Like seriously, a legit brownie is one of the hardest things to make healthy, in my experience. This is the closest I have ever come, and I’m pleased.

CF page 391

Creamy Red Raspberry Sherbet

Dairy free and really, really, really good.

CF page 313

Extreme Chocolate Ice Cream

Chocolate ice cream with a fudgy chocolate swirl – loosely based off of one of my favorite Dairy Queen Blizzards.

CF page 298

Lemon Cheesecake Delight

Like the Blueberry Cheesecake Delight above, but lemon. Real lemon.

CF page 414

Turtle Praline Cake

If you want to go all out, this is it.

NF page 270

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What’s up with the NF and CF?

NF = Necessary Food, my first cookbook (2016).

CF = Convenient Food, my second cookbook (2018).

These are beautiful books, if I may say so myself. 😛 Each contains around 400 recipes, and they are SUBSTANTIAL. Matte finished hard covers that make me so happy and will make YOU happy with their durability and stability. Spiral binding so you can easily turn to the page you want andstay there while stirring this and adding that. None of this floppy, fall-over-on-the-counter or won’t-stay-open stuff. CLICK HERE to check them out!

You may also enjoy:

• STARTING THM

• MY RECIPE INDEX

• RECIPE INDEX BY FUEL TYPE/ALLERGY/THEME