Contents
This is the method page — how no-bake desserts set, and why. The recipe list lives at No Bake Desserts in Recipes. The site keeps the two apart deliberately, the same way bread and bread recipes are split: method here, recipes there.
No-bake desserts set with cold, fat, or a gelling agent instead of heat. They belong in the baking section for two practical reasons: they use the same ingredients and the same counter, and they are what a bakery makes in July when running the oven is the worst idea in the kitchen.
Part of Baking.
How they set
- Chilled fat — chocolate, butter, and coconut oil, solid at refrigerator temperature and liquid in the mouth. See baking fats.
- Gelling agents — gelatine, agar, pectin. Pectin is the same mechanism as the site's preserving pages; see Fruit Jellies Jam Jellies Butters.
- Sugar concentration — fudge, fondant, and marshmallow, where the set is a crystallisation problem. See sugar in baking.
- Starch and dairy — puddings and icebox cakes, thickened rather than baked.
The family
- Fudge
- Marshmallow and rice crispy treats
- Coconut balls and other rolled truffles
- Icebox cakes and cheesecakes set without an oven
- Crumb crusts, which are the no-bake answer to pies and tarts
- Chilled tarts and mousse fillings
- Frozen desserts at the far end
The cookie-shaped members of the family — no-bake oatmeal drops, rice crispy squares — are worked out with weights and set times in the Set, not baked section of cookies. Worth keeping the distinction that page draws: skipping the oven is not the same as skipping the wait. A no-bake drop carries a 30-minute set, so it is slower to the first bite than a melted-butter drop cookie that bakes in ten. The recipe-side list is No Bake Desserts.
Summer baking
Hot weather is the practical reason most of this exists. The oven alternatives are the skillet and the air fryer — see pan and skillet breads, air fry Recipes, and easiest ways to cook.
Selling them
No-bake goods are the harder case under a cottage-food exemption, because many of them need refrigeration and most exemptions cover only shelf-stable products. See cottage food baking.