Five Healthy Holiday Dessert Ideas to Make This Year

It can be easy to indulge in your favorite desserts and other holiday treats and dishes with the holidays here. Unfortunately, plenty of these treats are filled with sugar, fats, and other ingredients that can contribute to weight gain and other symptoms of a poor diet over the holidays. Baking your own desserts is the best way to control these ingredients and can be a fun way to get active or bond with family and friends during the holidays. Thankfully, you can make many things or choices that inspire healthy alternatives without sacrificing the flavor and joy the holidays bring.

Here are five healthy holiday desserts to make this year to avoid unwanted weight gain:

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Just wash and place on a baking sheet over parchment paper to avoid messing up your pan. Bake the sweet potatoes in a 400 degrees F oven for about 45 minutes to an hour until a fork goes through easily. You can serve with toppings like marshmallows, nuts, maple syrup, or brown sugar and cinnamon.

Holiday Date Balls or Date Caramel Dip

Dates are an amazing fruit that is often overlooked. To make date balls, blend 1 cup of seeded dates with ½ cup nuts and a pinch of salt. Roll date mixture into balls and coat in coconut (I personally don't like coconut, but many do) or eat as they are. You can add other ingredients, too, like cocoa powder and protein powder.

To make the date caramel dip, all you need to do is cover pitted dates with warm water, let the dates sit for a few hours to expand and become soft. Pour off half the water and blend in a high-speed blender until smooth. For variation, you can add vanilla or other flavors. Use to dip apples and other sweet fruit.

Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate Desserts

You can buy a lot of dark chocolate that is dairy-free and use it for preparing a dessert. For example, you can add avocado and maple syrup to your blender, blend, then stream in melted dark cholate and keep blending for a delightful chocolate pudding that everyone will be shocked is made from avocado.

Homemade Popcorn

Instead of buying microwave popped corn or using the movie butter type, you can make your own popped corn at home that is healthy. Get an air popper to make the best and top it with low fat or fat-free toppings or eat it as is.

Bake Apples or Other Fruits

Any type of fruit you can find baked will be much sweeter and almost feel decadent under the right circumstances. If you haven't looked up fruit-based healthy recipes lately on Google, now is your chance. You may shock your family with your creations when you realize what you can do with fruit.

This is a shortlist of the many different healthy desserts you can make this year. Of course, you don't need to go an unhealthy route to create delicious treats during the holidays. These healthy holiday desserts are easy to make and will satisfy just about anyone's sweet tooth. So this year, give them a try to see just how fun and healthy it can be to bake your own holiday desserts.