Nut-Free Desserts and Breads

By Food & Wine
Updated April 25, 2017
Delicious alternatives to nutty dishes, from blueberry muffins with a crumb topping to sunflower seed brittle.
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Banana Layer Cake with Mascarpone Frosting

Credit: © Quentin Bacon
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Bananas and nuts are often paired together in desserts, but not in this cake. Mascarpone is an Italian cheese that’s superrich, delicate and creamy. Here, it’s simply blended with confectioners’ sugar to create a sublime, snow-white frosting.

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Blueberry Muffins with Crumb Topping

Credit: Grace Parisi
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These tender muffins—sprinkled with a quick, crumbly streusel topping—are amazingly light.

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Milk Chocolate Crémeux with Sesame Crème Anglaise

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"My favorite thing growing up was peanut butter on a spoon. Sesame is similar but more refined. And nut-free," says Shawn Gawle. This silky pudding-like milk chocolate dessert is laced with bourbon, then topped with a simple sesame-custard sauce.

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Sunflower Seed Brittle

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Brittles are almost always made with nuts, but here, fromager Tia Keenan of New York City’s Casellula Cheese & Wine Café uses sunflower seeds. She loves serving it with semifirm cow's-milk cheeses, like sharp cheddar or 5 Spoke Creamery Tumbleweed cheese.

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Salted Fudge Brownies

Credit: Tina Rupp
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F&W’s Kate Krader has been making these fudgy, sweet-salty brownies since she was 10 years old. As a kid she used regular table salt; now she recommends a flaky sea salt like Maldon, because the flavor is less harsh and it melts so nicely into the batter, accentuating the chocolaty sweetness.

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Raisin Rye Bread

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North Carolina baker Lionel Vatinet developed this hearty, fiber-rich bread to satisfy his Eastern European customers.

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Apple Crostata

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These free-form pies from F&W’s Grace Parisi use cheddar cheese in the crust and a mix of Granny Smith, Pink Lady and Golden Delicious apples for the filling.

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Oaty Mixed Berry Crumble

Credit: John Kernick
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Toppings on fruit desserts often have nuts, but this one is delicious without them. A generous amount of butter mixed into the oats makes the crumble especially light and crisp.

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Sunflower Seed & Rosemary Crackers

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Ruth-Anne Adams, the consulting pastry chef at Rocca Kitchen & Bar in Boston, and her husband, Tom Fosnot, the restaurant’s chef, first tasted this simple, sunflower seed-flecked cracker in the town of Chiavari in Liguria, Italy. When they returned, they re-created it to serve as a snack at the restaurant.

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Crispy Sesame Tuiles

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Kyotofu, a sleek New York City dessert bar, uses Japanese ingredients like green tea and sesame seeds in updated versions of Japanese classics. It recently began collaborating with the renowned Japanese tea company Tafu, whose top-tier teas pair beautifully with sweets like these tuiles, devel-oped by Kyotofu founder Nicole Bermensolo and her chef, Ritsuko Yamaguchi.

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