Nine recipes that never go near the oven, for the weeks when turning it on feels like a mistake.
Salads come first, then a pudding, and then the sweet things you press into a pan and put in the fridge. Five of the nine are ours, and the rest come from cooks we read.
1. Fresh Cucumber Carrot Salad
This one’s ours, and it’s about as simple as food gets: cucumber and carrot, cut thin, dressed and eaten. Fifteen minutes, serves four.
Worth making when the cucumbers are good, and not worth it when they aren’t.
2. Arugula Sunflower Sprout Salad
Another of ours. Three cups of sunflower sprouts with arugula, tomato, cucumber and a can of kidney beans, and a dressing of sunflower seed butter and lemon, so nothing needs blending.
The beans are what turn it into lunch rather than a side.
3. Moroccan Orange Salad with Dates and Pomegranate
Sliced orange with dates, red onion, pomegranate seeds, almonds and mint over arugula, and it looks like far more work than it is. Serves four at 237 calories.
There’s a tablespoon of honey in the dressing; use maple syrup instead, and the dates will carry the rest of the sweetness.
Get the recipe from Seasons in the Kitchen.
4. Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding
Four ingredients, and it’s one of ours: banana, cocoa, plant milk and chia seeds. The banana does all the sweetening, so there’s no sugar or syrup in it anywhere.
Thirty-five minutes, most of which is the chia setting in the fridge while you do something else.
5. Easy No-Bake Brownie
Our no-bake brownie is two cups of walnuts and two cups of dates blitzed with cocoa and pressed into a pan. Twenty minutes, serves eight, and the dates are the only sweetener.
It firms up in the fridge and slices properly once it’s cold, so give it the time.
6. Easy Vegan Oatmeal Cake with Strawberries
This is ours too, and it’s the biggest thing on the list. Oats, banana and dates make the base, and frozen strawberries blended smooth go on top. It serves ten and needs about an hour, nearly all of it setting in the fridge.
No flour, no sugar and no oven.
7. Healthy Apricot Balls
Dried apricots with oats, almonds, dates and hemp seeds, rolled into thirteen balls. Ten minutes, and 177 calories each.
The apricots make them tangier than the usual date-and-cocoa version, and that’s the reason to make these instead.
Get the recipe from Give Me The Vitamins.
8. Coconut Date Nut Balls
Three ingredients: sixteen medjool dates, a cup and a half of whatever nuts you have, and shredded coconut to roll them in. Makes twenty-three at 115 calories each.
It’s the shortest ingredient list on this list, and the one to make with the kids.
Get the recipe from Vibrantly G-Free.
9. Chocolate Walnut Fudge
Three hundred grams of walnuts ground down with cacao, coconut sugar, orange peel and fresh mint. Makes nine pieces.
It also calls for five or six tablespoons of olive oil, which is an unusual thing to find in a fudge, and the walnuts have more than enough fat of their own to manage without it.
Get the recipe from Refresh My Health.
Dates do the work
Five of the sweet things here are sweetened with nothing but dates or banana, and they set firm in the fridge because the nuts and the fruit bind on their own. If the mixture is crumbling when you press it, it wants another date rather than more water.
And, always, seek health consciously.
