If you thought you wouldn’t ever eat custard again after going on an egg-free diet, you’ll love my easy Pumpkin Custard recipe! This no bake custard is a quick and easy paleo vegan dessert. To make it you simply throw the ingredients in a high-powered blender, transfer to adorable mason jars, and then refrigerate.
Dairy-free Pumpkin Custard is the perfect paleo vegan dessert recipe for Thanksgiving. Because it’s so easy to make, it’s also fantastic last minute dessert recipe for Thanksgiving. I usually make my Thanksgiving desserts a day ahead of time, but this recipe is so easy that I whip it up right before we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, and then pull it out of the refrigerator when it’s time for dessert.
We’re on a major pumpkin kick right now. Last weekend, my husband took the boys and their friend Josh to get pumpkins for Halloween. When they returned the three little ones spent hours in the back yard carving their jack-o-lanterns.
Pumpkin Custard
Ingredients
- ½ cup cashews, raw
- 1 tablespoon agar flakes
- 1 pinch celtic sea salt
- 1¼ cups water, boiling
- 1½ cups roasted pumpkin
- ¼ cup agave nectar or honey, plus a little more if you want it sweeter
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1-2 teaspoons ground ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 pinch ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon lemon zest
Instructions
- Place cashews, agar, and salt in a vitamix and process to a fine powder
- Pour boiling water into vitamix and process on high speed
- Add pumpkin, honey, and vanilla and process until smooth
- Blend in cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and lemon zest
- Pour custard into ramekins or ½ cup mason jars
- Refrigerate 30-60 minutes, until set
- Serve
I’ve been creating loads of paleo vegan dessert recipes lately. Have you seen my Paleo Vegan Desserts Recipes page? Along those lines, I was determined to make this a vegan custard since so many of my readers are either vegan, or on an egg-free diet. Making a custard without eggs is not all that easy since eggs are traditionally the main ingredient in custard.
For this recipe, I would not recommend substituting canned pumpkin for the roasted pumpkin. Canned pumpkin is very wet, so this Pumpkin Custard recipe will be substantially altered by using such a watery ingredient. If you do decide to use canned pumpkin you will need to make several adjustments to compensate. I hope you’ll leave a comment if you do experiment with this recipe and use canned pumpkin.
Here are some of my other easy paleo vegan dessert recipes for you!
chava says
That looks so good. I make raw cheesecake out of raw cashews similar way.
I need to get agar flakes and i will surely make this!
Jen says
I know this recipe is from a couple years ago, but I just found it. I made it without agar (I can’t have that) and took it to my friend’s birthday party this past weekend – I just poured it into a big flat-bottom glass bowl rather than individual jars.
I considered subbing gelatin for the agar (I even looked up the equivalent amount & ran to the store to buy the gelatin), but decided to just leave it out to keep it vegetarian / almost vegan, since there’s usually a shortage of those types of sweets at parties. (I use honey in place of agave, so mine wasn’t vegan, but it was the only dairy-free, egg-free dessert there.)
I called it Pumpkin Pudding / Custard since it wasn’t as firm as I assume it gets with agar and people loved it. They didn’t care about how firm it was – they liked the taste. Thanks for this recipe. I’m excited to have a dairy-free pudding / custard type recipe to enjoy AND share with others.
Jen
Jennifer says
I did try the canned pumpkin and it worked well. Here is what I changed.
I soaked the cashews in water for one hour, drained them, and put them in my food processor (cuisinart) along with the spices, vanilla, all but about 2-3 oz of a 15 oz can of pumpkin and lemon zest and processed them.
Then I put the 1 TBSP agar flakes in one cup of water. I brought it to boil, then simmered 5 minutes.
I mixed it all together with the agave syrup in my blender as my food processor is too small to accomodate all of that.
I ate the first serving room temperature and it was more like a mousse. Very yummy and just the filling bedtime snack I have been looking for since having to give up eggs, corn, and dairy in addition to wheat!
jen :D
Terry says
I am looking forward to trying your pumpkin custard! I have tree nut allergies, as well. What might you recommend as substitution for the raw cashews?
Thank you!
Elana says
Terry, I haven’t tried that so not sure. Here’s a link to my Nut-Free Recipes page for you:
https://elanaspantry.com/diets/nut-free/
Enjoy!
Elana
Aleta says
I have not tried the recipe as is, so I can’t compare per se, but I decided to try this variation with canned pumpkin puree and cashew butter (because that’s what I had on hand), and it came out pretty well. I’m not sure the agar made much difference, the texture did not change (set) when refrigerated. But the texture was definitely thick and custard-like. I poured it into ramekins and realized that it was just like a mini pumpkin pie with an allergen-free, reuseable crust! I am sharing my recipe if others want to try it.
1/4 cup raw cashew butter
1 tablespoon agar flakes
1 pinch celtic sea salt
1/3 cup boiling water
1 15-oz can pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspon garam masala spice blend*
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (didn’t have any whole lemons on hand for lemon zest)
3 T agave nectar (plus a little more if you want it sweeter)
4 drops stevia glycerite (or other stevia product to taste)
Bring water to boil in small saucepan, add agar flakes, stir & heat on low until flakes are dissolved.
Add all ingredients in a blender or food processor, including agar gel. Blend until creamy, taste & adjust sweetener/spices if necessary. Serve!
* This is my favorite spice blend, I substitute it for pumpkin pie spice blend. So if you don’t have it, sub an extra tsp of cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice.
candice says
I want to make the pumpkin custard (and a number of other recipes) but am wondering about the cashews – do you use raw or roasted? If raw, soak them first?
Thanks for the great blog; I was turned onto it by your fab sister Dina who’s a friend!
Candice
Elana says
Candice, this recipe calls for raw cashews :-)
Lynne says
Elana,
Made this over two days last week (Tuesday for roasting the pumpkin and Wednesday for making the custard. Then I had it on Thanksgiving when my guests had their pumpkin pie. It hit the spot for me!
Thanks.
Yael says
I made this custard and used it as pumpkin pie filling. I used the crust recipe from this website. It was so delicious!! The only thing I’d do differently next time is maybe use a bit more agar to stiffen the custard more so that the pie slice would hold up better. Or, maybe I didn’t need the crust at all.
Crystal says
Hi! I just want to say thanks sooo much for this web site–it is truly inspirational. I recently discovered ten new food allergies in my daughter and it has been about two weeks–she was starting to get depressed and sick of the foods we were preparing. She is allergic to: Milk, Peanut, Soy, Rice, Oat, Rye, Wheat, Corn, (Therefore, Gluten Intolerant) & Codfish–it has been a challenge.
I have found that speghettii squash is a good substituion for pasta–and have been making her bread from tapioca and potato flour. Any other suggestions?
elana says
Christina,
Thanks for your sweet comment, I appreciate it.
Not sure exactly what the difference in measurement would be as I haven’t used the powder, I bet it’s pretty close though.
Elana
Primrose says
If I could just chip in here to say that the formula used is 1 tsp Agar powder = 3 tsp (1 Tablespoon) Agar flakes.
It’s not too hard to change agar flakes into powder using a spice/coffee grinder.