Dairy Free Pumpkin Fluff Ice Cream Pie

Think all your favorite desserts are out of the picture on a dairy free diet?  Think again, my friends!  This unique dairy free pumpkin fluff pie puts a fun spin on dessert and is perfect for Thanksgiving.

You’ll start with a graham cracker crust, fill it with dairy free ice cream, and then slather on a pumpkin fluff topping.  It’s one of those desserts the whole crowd will love, and no one will even know it’s dairy free.

Disclaimer: I’ve identified potential allergens below but as always, check the ingredients and labels to verify for yourself.  There’s always I chance I may miss something or that a manufacturer has changed formulations. 

How to make dairy free pumpkin fluff pie

This isn’t your traditional Thanksgiving style pumpkin pie (though if you want one of those, I’m happy to add one here soon!), so you’ll need a few ingredients that you might not expect.  The good news is you really only need six ingredients total to make this!

Here’s what you’ll want to grab from the store:

• Graham cracker pie crust
• Dairy free ice cream
• Pumpkin puree
• Cinnamon
• Marshmallow Fluff
• Dairy free frozen whipped topping

You’ll start by putting your dairy free ice cream in the graham cracker crust.

Then you’ll make your pumpkin fluff layer.  To do this, you’ll mix up the pumpkin puree, cinnamon, fluff, and dairy free frozen whipped topping.  It will be a little liquidy but that’s normal.

You’ll pour this over your ice cream layer and then let it set in the freezer for at least six hours, but it may need to sit overnight to set.

That’s it!  Once that top layer has set, you’re ready to dig in and enjoy.

Recommended products

Ice cream

This recipe is pretty flexible depending on your preferred flavor profiles for the ice cream layer.  Obviously, you’ll need to select a dairy free ice cream choice, but you can choose what you prefer best as far as a coconut base, oat milk base, cashewmilk base, etc.

I’d personally recommend one of these three flavors:

• Pumpkin ice cream
• Vanilla ice cream
• Caramel ice cream

In these photos, I used the dairy free pumpkin pie Halo Top and that’s great for a double dose of pumpkin goodness.  (This particular Halo Top flavor lists the following allergen information online: Contains tree nuts [coconut] and wheat. This product has been processed on equipment that sometimes processes other tree nuts, milk, eggs and peanuts.  Obviously if you have an anaphylactic reaction to dairy, you’ll want to weigh the cross contamination warning).

But in full honesty, I prefer the flavor profile better when I use the So Delicious cashewmilk salted caramel cluster ice cream.  That salted caramel tastes SO good in combo with the pumpkin fluff topping.  (This product contains tree nuts.)

As a heads up, if you’re using the vanilla or caramel ice cream options, you can use these plain as is, or you can optionally mix in a few extra tablespoons of pureed pumpkin for extra pumpkin flavor in that layer.  You don’t want to mix in too much pumpkin for the ice cream layer because dairy free ice cream has a tendency to get an icy texture if you add too much.

That said, the pumpkin fluff layer has a great amount of pumpkin flavor, so you don’t necessarily need pumpkin in the bottom layer.  Just offering that suggestion in case you are alllll about the pumpkin flavor right now.

Graham cracker crust

You’ll find most graham cracker crusts are dairy free, and you can search through the different brands if you have other allergy needs.  Here’s an example of some of the common dairy free brands when I was shopping at a local grocery store (Market Basket):

• Honey Maid Graham Cracker Crust (contains wheat)

• Market Basket Graham Cracker Crust (contains wheat and soy)

• Keebler Ready Crust (contains wheat and soy)

• Midel Gluten Free Graham Cracker Crust (top 8 free)

Any of these would work great for your pumpkin fluff pie.

Frozen whipped topping

Luckily, brands are evolving and there are currently two great options for frozen dairy free whipped toppings!  So Delicious makes Original Coco Whip, which I find has an extremely similar texture to the traditional dairy counterpart (Cool Whip).  (This product contains coconut).

Truwhip also makes a vegan version of their frozen toppings – but they produce dairy-based versions too, so you’ll just want to make sure you select the vegan one if you’re shopping for it.  (This product contains soy).

Allergens in this recipe:

As long as you choose safe ingredients, this recipe is dairy free. It can also be adjusted for several other allergens depending on what specific brands you choose – many of which I touched on above.  Here are some specific suggestions:

• To make this wheat/gluten free:  Choose a gluten free graham cracker crust, and be sure your ice cream does not contain wheat (for example, the pumpkin dairy free Halo Top *does* contain wheat, so you’d want to avoid that one).
• To make this soy free:  Ensure that the graham cracker crust is soy free; several options on the market contain soy but there are soy-free options.  Also, double check your ice cream to ensure there’s no soy (neither of the brands I mentioned above appeared to contain soy).  Lastly, be sure to choose So Delicious Coco Whip for your frozen whipped topping, rather than Truwip Vegan.
• To make this nut free:  Choose a dairy free ice cream that’s made with an oat milk base and verify that it’s nut free.  If sensitive to coconut, use Truwhip vegan rather than So Delicious Coco Whip for your frozen whipped topping.

Because fluff is an essential ingredient and it does contains eggs, that’s the one thing that will probably be hard to modify in this recipe.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family does!  If you get a chance to try it, be sure to leave a recipe rating or comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Share with me:  What’s your favorite dairy free dessert?  If you tried this dairy free pumpkin fluff pie, what did you think?