Single serve: It’s not just for coffee anymore! Instead of making an entire batch of cupcakes, satisfy your sugar cravings with 10 amazing better-for-you single serve dessert recipes from around the web. We sourced from some of our favorite third-party bloggers and websites, and they’ve taken classic dessert recipes and made them healthier and smaller, without sacrificing taste. You CAN enjoy your favorite desserts while practicing portion control!
Perks of Single-Serve Desserts
We love just about everything about single-serving desserts. We don’t believe in cutting anything you love completely out of your diet, and single-serve sweets are a great way to enjoy a reasonable amount of your favorite treats. For example, when you make a chocolate mug cake, you get to indulge a craving, enjoy your favorite chocolate flavor and feel satisfied – without worrying about the entire cake that’s now sitting on your kitchen counter, waiting to be devoured. Single-serve desserts are a great way to enjoy your favorite foods without keeping them around all the time, which can sidetrack you from your health goals. And as you’ll find in this article, you can adapt just about any dessert you love into a single-serving treat or mug cake, whether that’s cupcakes, ice cream, muffins or pie.
The best part of single-serving desserts is definitely enjoying our favorite treats in moderation, but there are lots of other perks, too! As we’ve mentioned, when you make a single-serve dessert, you aren’t making an entire cake. Not only will you save yourself from future sugary temptation, you’re also saving your pantry ingredients, like sugar, eggs and flour, for future healthy (or healthy-ish) recipes. Even if you’re not worried about eating in moderation, these single-serve treats can really come in handy if you’re hosting a party of one.
In addition to ingredients, these recipes will save you a key resource: your time! Most mug cakes come together in just seconds, between mixing and microwaving. Some of the single-serving desserts featured below do take longer, and might involve freezing time (such as the raspberry ice cream). However, when compared to mixing an entire batch of brownies or cupcakes, we think it’s easy to say that single-serving desserts are a huge timesaver.
Another way that they’re going to save you time: Dishes! Raise your hand if you hate washing dishes. They’re a necessary evil for sure, particularly in meal prep and cooking, but the more you can avoid, the better. Thankfully, single-serving desserts are often made right in their dish, which means fewer bowls, measuring cups, and utensils to clean.
In summary: single-serving desserts are delicious, time-saving, low on dishes and high in flavor! Whether you’re trying one of the healthier recipes or treating yourself to a sugary single-serve chocolate chip cookie, you can know that you’re making a healthy choice for yourself. The more information we learn about single-serving desserts, the more we love them, and we hope that you love the recipes from these third-party bloggers as much as we did.
1. Single-Serve Banana Cake from Fit Foodie Finds
If you love bananas and you love cake, this recipe was literally made for you. Loaded with delicious chunks of banana and sweetened by dark chocolate morsels, this single-serve mug cake recipe is a true late-night-sweet-tooth attack treat. The best part? It’s made with just eight ingredients, all of which you likely have sitting in your pantry. At 302 calories per serving, this sweet treat won’t set you back too far in your health journey and has just enough sugar to satisfy any killer cravings.
2. Double Chocolate Chunk Protein Shake from Anytime Fitness
While this recipe could be prepared morning, noon, or night—we think it makes for a killer dessert. Loaded with chocolate and packed with protein, you get the best of both worlds with this satisfying shake. Give it a try, you’ll see what we mean!
3. Skinny Cobbler from Something Swanky
If you’re not a huge fan of chocolate mug cakes, this single-serve fruit cobbler might be perfect for you! Peaches were the fruit used in this tasty photo, but don’t be fooled – you can make this skinny cobbler with just about any frozen fruit you have on hand. It’s made in the microwave with just a few easy ingredients for a simple, adaptable, fruity dessert! We’d recommend adding a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to the frozen fruit for extra flavor and zest.
4. Single Serve Microwave Carrot Cake Muffin from Desserts with Benefits
Carrot cake might seem like a unique, intimidating dessert, but this single-serve carrot cake muffin makes it an easy, five-minute treat, and a sneaky way to get your veggies in. This healthy dessert uses whole grain flour, applesauce in place of oil, and amps up the nutrition with ground flaxseed. It also uses almond milk and applesauce, making this an egg-free, vegan dessert. Not only will you satisfy your carrot cake cravings, you’ll get extra veggies, too. There is some sugar in this recipe, but it can be modified to your taste and nutrition needs.
5. Giant Snickerdoodle Cookie from Sally’s Baking Addiction
Craving a snickerdoodle cookie, but don’t want to keep an entire batch around? We’ve got the recipe for you! Using traditional ingredients like butter, white flour, eggs and sugar, it’s definitely more of a traditional dessert, but when you’re only making one cookie, you don’t have to worry about setting your health goals back too far. You will have some leftover egg, which we recommend saving for a future omelet or scramble. Indulge away!
6. Single Serve Blueberry Muffin from Chocolate Covered Katie
Who doesn’t love massive, fluffy, bakery-style blueberry muffins? Well, you can save yourself the trip to the coffee shop – and a lot of calories – and make this one yourself! Katie uses whole wheat flour and coconut oil for a healthier twist with this blueberry muffin! It’s crazy-easy to make, with just blueberries and pantry ingredients. Enjoy with a glass of almond milk and banana for a perfect breakfast.
7. Single-Serve Double Chocolate Cake from Nosh and Nourish
Chocolate on chocolate? Yes please! Nosh and Nourish uses whole wheat flour and a secret ingredient, chickpeas, to amp up the nutrition of this dessert, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite chocolate mug cake recipes. It’s sweetened naturally with a banana, plus some coconut sugar and dark chocolate chips, but you can omit the coconut sugar if you’re going for a less-sweet dessert. For an extra treat, we recommend topping it with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yum!
8. Banana Bread in a Mug from Pass the Sushi
Banana bread is a tasty treat, but sometimes, you don’t need a whole loaf – or just don’t have enough bananas. And what better way to use up a brown banana than with this simple recipe for banana bread in a mug? Once you have a banana, you just need pantry ingredients plus an egg and some milk for this mug cake to come together in seconds. This recipe does have a few tablespoons of sugar, but you can adjust to taste.
9. Single-Serve Healthy Raspberry Ice Cream from Heather’s French Press
This recipe calls for sour cream, but we’re going to let you in on some important information – you can replace sour cream with an equal amount of Greek yogurt! It’s one of our favorite ways to health-ify dips, plus this tasty summer treat. We also recommend adding a squeeze of lemon juice to complement the raspberry flavor. It’s made with fresh fruit and honey, so it’s basically just a yogurt parfait. Did somebody say ice cream for breakfast? (We did.)
10. Chocolate Chip Cookie in a Cup from Number 2 Pencil
Who doesn’t love a gooey, warm chocolate chip cookie, fresh out of the oven? Now you can have one on-demand and fresh out of your microwave in just seconds! This cookie recipe uses traditional cookie ingredients like butter and sugar, but sometimes, you’re just craving the real thing, and its small serving size means you can totally indulge.
