Chapter 1
Common & Essential Ingredients for No-Bake Desserts
Just one visit to the grocery store will stock your cupboard, fridge and freezer with the basic supplies that you need for no-bake dessert making. You will even find that almost 95% of those ingredients are already in your kitchen!
Here are the common and essential ingredients that you will need to have on-hand to be able to create impromptu no-bake desserts;
Salt
A sprinkle of salt on sweet dishes can actually make the dessert taste sweeter and better. It enhances the other flavors and creates the perfect balance.
Sugar
- Granulated Sugar: Made from the juice of beets or sugarcane.
- Powdered Sugar: It is sugar ground into ultra-fine particles and combined with starch.
- Brown Sugar: It is sugar with added molasses. The shade of color and the intensity of the flavor are proportional to the amount of molasses added to the sugar.
Dairy
- Butter: The default choice for dessert making is unsalted butter. Butter can be frozen until it is used.
- Milk: It provides moisture to the batter. Usually whole milk is preferred over low-fat milk since it gives a richer flavor.
- Condensed Milk: It adds a subtle sweetness to the dessert while maintaining the required consistency.
- Cream Cheese: It is essential for making cheesecake, which is the base for many non-bake desserts.
- Whipped Cream: Used as both a topping and a spread when making layered desserts.
Extracts
- Vanilla Extract: The pure vanilla extract is available both as liquid and paste, but in our recipes, we will be using the liquid form. The vanilla extract gives a spicy aroma and enhances the flavor. For ice-creams, it provides the desired' scoop-able' consistency.
- Other extracts can be used as flavoring agents such as mint extract and almond extract.
Spices
- Cinnamon: It has the ability to enhance both savory and sweet dishes. It is the perfect partner for chocolate-based desserts.
- Ginger: An essential ingredient with most pumpkin-based desserts as well as other dishes.
Add-Ins
- Chocolate: Chocolate comes in many forms and they all have their different uses including fillings and toppings. The basic forms of chocolate that you will need to have around are; bar chocolates, chocolate chips and cocoa powder (unsweetened).
- Peanut Butter: Peanut butter is very popular in many no-bake desserts, and thus it would be quite handy to have a couple of large jars in stock. It is part of a 2-ingredient dessert, and many other similarly easy-to-make desserts which makes it a desirable go-to ingredient.
- Nuts: They can be stored in the fridge or freezer to extend their life. They can be used either raw or roasted.
- Oats: Among all the essential ingredients, oats proudly occupies the top of the list nutrition-wise.
- Vanilla Wafer Cookies, Graham Crackers: They provide a harmonious balance with creamy desserts, both texture-wise by acting as a base and taste-wise by providing a light crunch to the smooth creamy taste.
- Food coloring: It allows you to create desserts that have a stunning visual effect.
- Fruits: Either dried or fresh, they would be second on that previously mentioned list of nutritious ingredients. The best thing about fruits is that they are so diverse, each with its unique identity, flavor and texture.
- Sprinkles: For adding that final festive touch on your work of art.
