13 Air Fryer Desserts That Make Baking Super Simple (and Healthy)
Let’s face it: Baking can be a ton of fun, but it takes a lot of time to prepare your favorite desserts — time you don’t always have.
Besides, sometimes it’s best for you — and your waistline — if you don’t have three dozen cookies lying around, calling your name every second of the day. After all, you don’t want to waste anything —especially baked goods.
That’s why air fryers are so amazing. Not only are they super convenient (no oven needed!), they make also make it easy to create smaller (and healthier) versions of your favorite treats.
What You’ll Need to Make Air Fryer Desserts
First thing’s first: You’ll need an air fryer than can handle these desserts. The problem? There are approximately 110 billion different brands of air fryers sold on Amazon.
OK, maybe we’re exaggerating a little bit, but it’s almost impossible to weed through the selection to find what you’re looking for. That’s why we’ve rounded up the three best air fryers — compact, medium and large.
Best Compact Air Fryer
Cooking for one? The Dash Compact Air Fryer is your best bet. The device comes in five trendy colors and has a 1.7L capacity (meaning it can hold about one pound of food), making it simple to whip up a few air fryer desserts in minutes.
Best Medium-Sized Air Fryer
The GoWISE USE 3.7 qt. Digital Air Fryer gets high marks for its 3.7-quart capacity and eight presets, along with the recipe book that comes with it. However, most reviewers love it for its use of Rapid Air Circulation Technology to quickly (and evenly) cook all types of foods.
Best Large Air Fryer
Why make one air fryer dessert when you can make two at the same time? With the Ninja Foodi 8 qt., 2-Basket Air Fryer, you can. The two-basket system makes it easy to whip up a lot of food in a pinch, and the DualZone Technology with Smart Finish means your food will finish at the same time. The future is wonderful, isn't it?
Air Fryer Desserts Perfect For Any Time of Year
It’s difficult to know which desserts are made for the air fryer, and which won’t turn out as ooey-gooey as you want. That’s why we rounded up the best sweet air fryer recipes to help you get started.
And we apologize in advance because you’ll definitely be craving sweets after seeing all these decadent creations.
Pop Tarts are the OG desserts. Sure, they’re technically for breakfast, but they slap any time of day. The downside? One Pop Tart alone will set you back 200 calories.
That’s why these Strawberry Lemonade Vegan Pop Tarts caught our eye. The filling for these crispy, delectable wonders is made with chia jam, but the rest looks just like you remember from childhood. Bonus: You’ll get in plenty of micronutrients with the ingredients used to make them!
Is there anything Nutella can’t do? We argue no — and our point is proven, thanks to these air-fried sandwiches that feature the decadent hazelnut spread and bananas. Don’t like the fruit? Swap it out your faves, because raspberries, strawberries, and peaches will work, too. Oh, and you can even add a few drops of Grand Marnier to make it even more delicious (if that’s even possible).
Perfect for Valentine’s Day — or any day — these heart-shaped shortbread cookies are made entirely in the air fryer and require only a few ingredients to make. The secret to making them slide out without sticking is to put them on a baking sheet inside the air fryer. Seriously, it’s that simple.
Deep-fried beignets coated in layers of powdered sugar is a staple dessert in Cajun cuisine. Loaded with sugar and fat, these wonders are understandably delicious, but not exactly a good choice for a healthy diet.
Luckily, these vegan beignets — made with coconut milk, coconut oil, and unbleached flour — are a suitable replacement. You can even make them in the oven if you’d like — and they reheat like a dream, meaning you can make them on a Sunday and enjoy all week.
These air fryer apple pies are the real deal, even if the thought of making apple pie in anything other than grandma’s old pie plate seems a bit blasphemous.
The prep process for this recipe is pretty much identical to oven-baked apple pies, the only difference is that you stick them in a (large) air fryer basket for about 20 minutes at 320 degrees.
Drop a dollop of ice cream on top and the result is a delicious dessert that grandpa will approve of (even if you don’t use her pie plate).
This is a seriously simple dessert to make in the air fryer. All you have to do is create twists with pizza dough and fry — that’s it! What does take a (tiny) bit more time is the dipping sauce that goes with it. For the chocolate sauce, all you need is heavy whipping cream, chocolate chips, and some Amaretto or almond extract. Melt, blend, and serve — yum!
The only difference between oven-baked chocolate cake and air fryer chocolate cake? Not much, except the cooking temperatures will be lower in the air fryer than in the oven.
The only downside: You’ll either need to get a baking pan made specifically for your air fryer (like this one) or find a baking pan small enough to fit, but big enough to not burn your cake.
Making doughnuts seems like a really time-consuming thing, but they’re a snap to make in the air fryer. All you have to do is grab a package of flaky refrigerated biscuits (like the kind by Pillsbury), along with some coconut oil, cinnamon, and sugar, to create these delicious treats that rival your neighborhood bakery.
The best part? You don’t even have to change out of your PJs to make them.
Think you can only get churros at the Mexican bakery? Think again. It’s pretty simple to make these air fryer churros that seriously rival the deep-fried classic in under 90 minutes. The best part: You won’t even have to leave home to get that cinnamon-sugar goodness ever again.
You know how you can make a chocolate cake in the air fryer? Well, why not kick it up about a thousand notches by adding molten chocolate to the center? That’s exactly what you’ll do when you follow this molten lava cake recipe.
These molten lava cakes are cooked in ramekins inside the air fryer, making them single-serving sizes perfect for kids — or just an after-dinner treat.
If you’ve ever been to a Thai restaurant, then you’re likely familiar with these treats. Known as Goreng Pisang in Asian countries like Thailand and Singapore, all you need to do is dip slices of banana in a rice flour-based batter and then bake in the air fryer. It’s an easy — and fun — recipe that takes less than 60 minutes to create from start to finish.
If you’ve ever tried fried Oreos at the fair, then you know exactly how delicious — and addictive — these little things can be. They’re pretty unhealthy, too (as is pretty much everything sold fairs), but you can make a healthier version in the air fryer. All you need is crescent dough (and your favorite Oreo flavor) to make!
We know you’ve been looking for brownies on this list of healthy air fryer desserts, so we saved the best for last. These are just like your favorite oven-baked version, just a smaller batch. You know what that means? It’s easy to make a single-serve brownie for any day of the week — and you won’t have the rest of the pan screaming your name.
