Air Fryer Desserts You’ll Want To Try

Air fryers claim to cut down on the oil and fats in some of your favorite fried foods. You’re most likely to think of using one with things like chicken, fries and other savory foods.

Don’t let typical air fryer recipes limit your range when it comes to using this countertop convection oven, though! Air fryer desserts are also delicious and easy to cook. Plus, because air fryers use circulated air to “fry” food, many desserts that normally cook in oil are instantly healthier when done in an air fryer. You can make smaller batches, too, which can be a good thing in some households.

Here are some recipes you might like to try.

Cookies

Summer Yule has a sugar-free cookie recipe that uses whole-wheat flour or spelt along with white flour to make the cookie higher in fiber. She also uses egg whites rather than whole eggs.

If you prefer a chocolate chip cookie recipe, try out air fryer chocolate chip cookies from The Big Man’s World. These desserts are dairy- and egg-free and blogger Arman Liew says their texture “ticks all the boxes — thick, chewy, and crisp edges and perfectly soft in the middle.” Yum!

Donuts

OK, donuts might be among the air fryer desserts you think of when you think of cooking with an air fryer. And using an air fryer means much less fat and no chance of splattering yourself with hot grease while cooking this version.

Kitchen Fun with My Three Sons blogger Jill adapts her canned biscuit donuts recipe for the air fryer for a quick and easy option. (She also has a recipe for air fryer apple fries.)

Plated Cravings’ Julia Foerster makes her air fryer donuts from scratch with a yeast dough that’s left to rise before being cooked and a buttery glaze to top them off.

Hand Pies

While a whole pie might not fit in your air fryer, hand pies will! These clutchable, enclosed-crust air fryer desserts are another idea you might like to try.

Show Me the Yummy’s Jennifer Depth has a recipe for s’mores, blueberry, caramel apple and cherry hand pies. She admits she isn’t normally a huge fan of pie, “but I’m crazy obsessed with these hand pies,” she says. She fills her store-bought pie dough with marshmallow fluff and Nutella for the s’mores flavor, and already-prepared (or store-bought) blueberry, apple and cherry pie filling for the other three flavors.

Like many air fryer desserts, these hand pies cook up quickly! Show Me the Yummy’s recipe is done cooking in 11 minutes.

Churros

Delectable air fryer dessert churros are another option. Cooking Light says its version is “lighter than traditional churros — almost like éclairs — coming out of the air fryer fluffy and delicious.” It also recommends a chocolate dipping sauce with cream and tangy kefir.

Plated Cravings makes air fryer churros created with a star-shaped tip on a piping bag for that signature churro shape. Blogger Julia Foerster’s recipe has over 138 reviews and 4.93 out of 5 stars so it seems like a winner!

“They taste as delicious as deep-fried churros but have fewer calories and are easier to make without the need for handling hot oil,” Foerster writes.

Churros, it turns out, are made from straightforward ingredients you likely have on hand, including unsalted butter, sugar, salt, flour, eggs, vanilla extract and cinnamon sugar to roll them in after cooking.

Fruit Chips

Fruit is a healthy and accessible dessert on its own. Combine it with an air fryer to create fruit chips, and you’ve got some healthy snacking on your hands. Not to mention it’s a lot cheaper to make your own fruit chips than buy them ready-made at the grocery store.

If you’d like to try banana chips, The Belly Rules the Mind’s Soniya Soluja has a recipe for five different flavors of plantain chips. She soaks fresh bananas or plantains in a water-salt-turmeric solution before drying and slicing them and rolling them in coconut oil and more turmeric. They are then cooked in the air fryer until crispy.

Belly Rules the Mind blogger Anvita also has a recipe for apple chips that includes just three ingredients. Or try Mind Over Munch’s recipe. She rolls thinly-sliced apples in cinnamon and cooks them evenly by flipping them in the air fryer every five minutes until they are the texture she wants.

“Baked” Apples

Air fryer “baked” apple recipes soften the apples rather than crisping them up the way apple chip recipes do.

For her Cook It Real Good recipe, Cassie halves an apple, cores it, and swipes the cut half with butter and cinnamon. She then tops it with an oat mixture that turns into a crispy topping on the “baked” apple once cooked in an air fryer. Cassie says she usually adds ice cream on top. She also recommends Pink Lady apples for this recipe but says Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and Honeycrisp apples work well too.

Apple wedges are dipped in flour, egg, and a graham cracker crumb mixture to make tasty air fryer desserts in an Everyday Family Cooking recipe. Spritzing the slices with an oil mister before they go into the air fryer helps.

S’Mores

You might not think of cooking s’mores in an air fryer because the marshmallows are normally flame-grilled.

But Sparkles to Sprinkles has a popular recipe for this classic dessert that involves putting graham crackers with marshmallows on top in the air fryer until they crisp up. Then the chocolate and another graham cracker go on top of that. That’s it! The air fryer toasts up marshmallows well.

Sparkles to Sprinkles also has a recipe for an air fryer mini s’mores pie.

Toaster Pastries

Cooking Light has a recipe for homemade strawberry “Pop-Tarts” that involves making a fresh strawberry jam in the microwave and using premade pie crusts. A simple powdered sugar and lemon juice glaze gets brushed on top.

In their recipe, the Air Frying Foodie bloggers skip the jam-making step and use store-bought jam for filling.

Which of these air fryer desserts are you most tempted to try?

This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.