If you’re looking for some inspiration for Traeger dessert recipes, you might want to check out this blog post. I made five recipes from the Traeger Grills website to see which one is best for the upcoming holiday celebrations.
We selected a wide range of recipes to see what the Traeger Grills website has to offer. You’re sure to find one that catches your eye, no matter your preference. Keep reading to see what we made and what we thought of each recipe!
Traeger Desserts Recipe Selection Walkthrough
All recipes selected for this post are from the Traeger Grills website. While there are lots of Traeger dessert recipes out there, we wanted to choose from a selection that all Traeger owners will be able to easily access.
We chose five very different recipes to see what kind of variety the Traeger site offers. The recipes selected are Smoked Roasted Apple Pie, Baked Pecan Pie, Leave No Trace Smoked Chocolate-Chunk Oatmeal Cookies, Baked Caramel Pecan Brownie, and Baked Pumpkin Pie. There is something for everyone here!
Traeger Dessert Recipe #1: SMOKED ROASTED APPLE PIE
While I am not a fan of apple pie myself, my husband found this Traeger dessert to be delicious. It is fairly easy to make. The hardest portion of the recipe is peeling and chopping the apples, which isn’t difficult but rather time consuming. But that is to be expected with an apple pie!
One thing we noticed with most of these recipes, is that the recipe instructions are pretty vague. Thankfully, we read through recipe comments and reviews to help steer us in the right direction.
The recipe calls for flour in step one, but never specifies the amount in the ingredient list or the directions. Based on feedback from reviewers, we added one tablespoon of flour. We also included two tablespoons of cornstarch to help thicken the filling, based on advice from reviewers and found it to be helpful.
A few reviewers mentioned letting the apple mixture sit for an hour before draining and cooking. We tried it that way and we tried cooking right away without draining, and found the latter option best.
Traeger Dessert Recipe #2: BAKED PECAN PIE
This pecan pie pretty unique, thanks to the addition of orange zest in the filling. After my bake off to find the best pecan pie recipe on the internet, I was surprised to find something new in this recipe. And what a pleasant surprise it was!
The addition of the orange zest creates an elevated flavor profile that I will be sure to include in my next pecan pie bake.
Unfortunately, I managed to completely burn the pre-made crust that I opted for, by blind baking the crust for 25 minutes. The filling takes quite a long time to fully cook, which can lead to a burnt crust. Perhaps if I had made the crust that the recipe called for, then this could have been avoided.
Next time, I’ll be sure to skip the blind bake and cover the edges with aluminum foil around the halfway mark to prevent the edges from burning.
Traeger Dessert Recipe #3: LEAVE NO TRACE SMOKED CHOCOLATE-CHUNK OATMEAL COOKIES
Next is the Leave No Trace Smoked Chocolate-Chunk Oatmeal Cookies. What you may not realize from the title is that these cookies also have peanut butter in them! Yep, there’s a lot going on here with oatmeal, peanut butter, and chocolate chunks. If you like busy cookies, then these are for you!
Unfortunately, we found these cookies to be a bit too dry for our preference. It’s pretty common with peanut butter cookies to run into a dry cookie, and these are no exception.
Also, when cooking as directed, these cookies did not appear to be done at the 12 minute mark. They still were very gooey, so we left them in for an additional 2-3 minutes. However, in that small amount of time, they went from ooey-gooey to overdone and brown.
Traeger Dessert Recipe #4: BAKED CARAMEL PECAN BROWNIE
When I saw this recipe, I was quite certain that it would be my favorite of the whole bunch. I was, unfortunately, disappointed. While I think the premise of the bake is good, I don’t think the result is very good.
The brownie is rather plain and unmemorable, in my opinion. The caramel and pecans pretty much soak into the brownie while cooking and lose their wow factor. Perhaps adding that portion of the recipe at the end as a topper, instead of baking it inside, would solve that issue.
After making this, I knew I had to make my own Traeger brownie recipe. You can check it out here!
Traeger Dessert Recipe #5: BAKED PUMPKIN PIE
I couldn’t do a pecan pie bake off without doing a pumpkin pie bake off as well. Coming off that experiment, I was curious to see how this recipe stacked against them. Unfortunately, the verdict is not great. The flavor is just fine. I’d recommend choosing a filling from Sally’s Baking Addiction or Once Upon A Chef instead.
We did run into an issue with getting the cream cheese to fully incorporate into the mixture, despite being room temperature. This could possibly be solved by using a stand mixer for some extra power, as mixing it by hand was quite the task. However, the recipe does not mention the use of a stand mixer anywhere in the instructions.
This goes back to the instructions for all of these recipes being quite vague. Our recommendation is to be sure to always check out the recipe notes from other reviewers, as they have often troubleshooted issues and left their findings in the reviews for you.
Conclusion
Traeger has some tasty dessert recipes to choose from! I look forward to trying more. However, our number one finding would be to use the app when cooking to get the most accurate recipe instructions and measurements. We ran into issues with the ingredient measurements when using the printed instructions.
Let us know your favorite Traeger dessert recipes to make down in the comments below! If you’re looking for a couple new options, check out our smoked apple crisp, blueberry crumble or blackberry cobbler, and smoked chocolate chip cookies recipes next.
And be sure let us know what you’d like to see us make in the Traeger in the future. We’re excited to keep learning about all things Traeger desserts.