Name: Vegan Pumpkin Creme Brulee
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 1 can coconut milk; 1/2 raw cashews; 2 tablespoons arrowroot starch; 1/4 cup pumpkin puree; 1/4 cup maple syrup; 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 1/4 teaspoon salt; 1/4 teaspoon turmeric (optional for color); 2 tablespoons sugar

Jump to Recipe

Vegan Pumpkin Creme Brulee is an impressive dessert that is surprisingly easy to make! Filled with pumpkin spice and free of dairy, gluten, and eggs!

THIS is what pumpkin dreams are made of! Pumpkin Spice Creme Brulee has a luxuriously creamy dreamy dairy free custard infused with pumpkin and warm spices, topped with a shatteringly crisp caramely brullee topping.

If you haven’t started pumpkining yet, NOW is the time!

For me, creme brulee is 100% the most delicious, decadent, special occasion dessert and 100% the most intimidating, scary, can-I-do-it? dessert to make at home. There’s a torch involved for goodness sakes! I feel like I need to simultaneously be a pastry chef and a welder in order to pull off this dessert.

But I had this idea for a vegan pumpkin creme brullee kicking around around in my head and I could not get it to leave. So, fears of setting my hair on fire aside, I got to cooking.

And as it turns out, it is NOT a hard dessert to make! What it is is surprisingly easy, delicious, impressive, and bursting with pumpkin flavor. And, you don’t even need a torch.

How to make Vegan Pumpkin Creme Brulee without a torch:

On the road to the perfect pumpkin creme brulee, I learned a few essentials for success!

First, use a blender to incorporate the custard ingredients. This mixes in the starch completely ensuring that your custard is smooth and lump free. Most things are better lump free.

Then, you simply heat your custard over the stove until it thickens, pour it into ramekins, pop it into the fridge to set, and we are off the the brulee races.

Second, the broiler is your best friend for crispy, crunchy, caramele-y, non scary bruleeing. Line the custard filled ramekins up on a sheet tray (this will be very important for easy oven removal. And when we are dealing with bubbling molten sugar, easy oven removal is essential.)

Next, sprinkle the tops with sugar. Regular white or organic cane sugar work best here. My love for coconut sugar goes deep, but it tends to burn before it melts when bruleed. Send the sugared custard into the top rack of the oven and set it to broil.

The ideal broil temperature is somewhere between 450 and 500 degrees. You want it to be hot enough to melt the sugar and brown it evenly but not too hot that it burns some of the sugar while other areas are still melting.

Once the custards look evenly golden brown and bubbly (some darker spots are okay!) carefully remove them from the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes before serving.