The best summer desserts are easy to make, light enough for hot days but also too enticing to resist at the end of a cookout. Some showcase summer fruit at its peak, others are packable for trips to the beach and many evoke nostalgia for summers past. Here are some of our favorite summertime desserts to try before the season's out.
The panqué de elote found across markets like Mexico City’s Mercado de Coyoacán is somewhere between cake and cornbread, subtly sweet and velvety. It’s also a simple cake to make at home since it’s one layer and the batter—which includes fresh corn, condensed milk and yogurt—is made in the blender.
In this twist on an American classic, featured in our upcoming cookbook COOKish, we add tahini to boost flavor in a buttery oat mixture that bakes on top of juicy blueberries.
In this upgrade on the classic, inspired by Portland, Maine baker Briana Holt, deeply caramelized fruit meets a tender, moist crumb. To avoid the typical soggy layer, we first cook the pineapple to remove excess moisture, and we make sure the fruit is hot when the batter is poured on top so it begins to bake upon contact.
This recipe, which transforms sweet summer corn into a light, elegant dessert, is adapted from Vivian Howard's "Deep Run Roots" and teaches us a valuable lesson: Corn is the secret to a sturdy soufflé.
This summery dessert features lightly sweetened fresh berries encased in flaky, buttery pastry. The crostata is baked free form without a pie plate or tart pan, so shaping the dough is simple and there's no pan to fuss with.
These sweet-salty, chewy-crunchy treats are our adaptation of the wildly popular peanut butter–miso cookies from Falco Bakery in Melbourne, Australia. Umami-rich white miso makes the cookies taste full and complex.
This simple cake showcases tangy-sweet summertime plums without a soggy layer, a common pitfall of fruit cakes. We make a drier, lighter batter to balance the ripe fruit.
