21 Dessert Recipes That Don't Need Any Flour At All (2024)

Made with dark chocolate, espresso powder, eggs, and olive oil, this is the chunkier, fudge-ier (and easier!) alternative to layer cake. If it looks like a chocolate bar in cake form, that's because it basically is.

Recipe: Chocolate Espresso Cake

If your supermarket is anything like mine right now, there's not much AP flour on shelves — but there's plenty of boxed cake mixes with flour already inside. The latter is a great shortcut! This recipe upgrades a box of yellow cake and adds fresh rhubarb.

Recipe: Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

You can make these bars firmer by adding more oats or adding less banana. If you want even more flavor, sneak in a bit of pumpkin spice or cinnamon.

Recipe: Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Bars

Before all the other flourless desserts came along, there was pavlova. It's just egg whites + sugar + vanilla extract, and the final product has a perfectly chewy, crispy, and marshmallowy texture.

Recipe: Berry Pavlova With Lemon Curd Cream

You've tried banana bread, but have you ever tried apple bread? It's made with oatmeal and apples, and lightly sweetened with honey. Smear it with a nut butter for a complete breakfast.

Recipe: Apple Bread

So what if you squint a little, these muffins start looking like actual sweet potatoes? It's the moistest chocolate chip muffin I've ever had AND it gets extra points for (kind of) counting as a serving of veggies.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Muffins

If you've got an old package of graham crackers from last summer's campfire, then you're halfway there for these cheesecake bites. Decadent, rich, and snackable, they'll vanish as quickly as your s'mores did.

Recipe: Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake Bites

This recipe calls for old-fashioned oats, aka the flaky, thicker oats that take longer to cook than instant oatmeal. Hot tip: Throw in your other usual oatmeal toppings like raisins or slivered almonds for the perfect breakfast muffin.

Recipe: Fluffy Oatmeal Muffins

This four-ingredient cake takes just 20 minutes to prep, and five minutes to wolf down. Make sure to save some extra almonds to sprinkle on top of the cake as soon as it's out of the oven.

Recipe: 20-Minute Honey Almond Cake

A high-quality chocolate bar will serve as your main ingredient for this flourless classic, so make sure you get the good stuff. For toppings, try fresh fruit, chopped nuts, or your favorite ice cream.

Recipe: Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

If you're one of those people who often eats desserts and thinks, "This would be better, if it were just a little less sweet," then this recipe is for you. It's only sweetened with the natural sugars of sweet potatoes, meaning you can have them as a snack and not crash.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Pie Muffins

You don't need a fancy sourdough starter (or even flour) to make your own bread. Take this recipe, which uses tahini in place of flour to bring together all the spices and seeds into one super satisfying loaf.

Recipe: Tahini Seed Bread

Not only do ground almonds make excellent flour substitutes, they also make desserts smell fancy as hell.

Recipe: Strawberry Almond Cake

There's something about starchy sweet potatoes that works perfectly in lush, caramelly blondies. The crunch of white chocolate chips and pecans prevents excessive gooeyness and adds killer texture.

Recipe: Pecan-Cinnamon Sweet Potato Blondies

This recipe relies on three extremely ripe (aka, nearly black) plantains for a moist cake that's delicious on its own or served with whipped cream and berries.

Recipe: Plantain Cake

You can bake this recipe in either an Instant Pot or an oven. And since it's made with just three ingredients (eggs + cream cheese + milk chocolate), you really can't go wrong with either method.

Recipe: 3-Ingredient Instant Pot Cheesecake