37 Summer Desserts That’ll Sweeten Even the Hottest Days

Open the summer desserts file, and you'll find everything from easy no-bake desserts and frozen treats to fruit-packed pies, cobblers, and icebox cakes. Hot summer days call for low-effort sweet treats—but we’ve also included some special-occasion showstoppers for celebratory nights.

These summer desserts make the most of the season’s fleeting pleasures: ripe berries, stone fruit at its peak, bright and sunny citrus, cold cream, and crisp textures meant for hot evenings. Some recipes come together in minutes with little more than a knife and a freezer, while others are built for birthdays, dinner parties, and long holiday weekends. Whatever your pleasure, there’s a dessert here for you that feels distinctly suited to summer.

• Frozen & ice-cold summer desserts
• No-bake & make-ahead summer desserts
• Fruit-forward summer baking
• Summer celebration desserts

Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

When your summer dessert is portable, like these ice cream sandwiches are—bonus points for the cookies, which stay miraculously chewy and tender even straight out of the freezer—you can easily take them poolside.

Milky Shaved Ice With Strawberries

Don’t stop making this dessert when strawberry season ends; swap in cherries, plums, or any other juicy summer fruit you can get your hands on.

Cherry Ice Pops

A dash of cherry Jell-O powder keeps these frozen pops from getting too icy and boosts the flavor of the fresh sweet cherries, which can otherwise dull when frozen.

Matcha-Berry Frozen Yogurt

This gluten-free frozen dessert has one reader comment on its recipe page: “Delicious!” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves, really. The combination of strawberries, Greek yogurt, white chocolate, and matcha is definitely delicious.

Root Beer Float Granita

Root beer float, you’ve been replaced. This icy, creamy, two-ingredient concoction (just root beer and sweetened condensed milk) is all we need to close out the summer cookout.

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Cake

If cookies ‘n’ cream is your go-to at the ice cream shop, let us introduce you to your new favorite dessert. Serve it as a birthday cake for all the summer babies.

Almond and Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream

This beautifully swirled no-churn ice cream is giving berries and cream vibes. PS. If you don’t have almond extract and don’t want to go to the store, vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste will make a good substitute.

Diner-Style Strawberry Milkshakes

How do you pump up the flavor of an old-fashioned milkshake without watering it down with too many fresh berries? Toss some freeze-dried fruit in there, too.

Strawberry and Campari Sorbet Sundae

Adding a Greek yogurt whipped cream, shards of vanilla meringue, and fresh berries turns this no-churn strawberry sorbet into a thrillingly unconventional sundae.

Peach Sorbet With Crushed Blackberries

Lemon-blueberry is a classic combo, but we’re feeling partial to peach-blackberry this summer. Turn peaches into creamy sorbet (without an ice cream maker) and top it with a no-cook sauce of fresh berries.

Watermelon Cucumber Slushy

For the ultimate cooling refreshment, make this honey-sweetened slushy. A splash of vinegar adds balancing tang, but you can skip it for a sweeter sip.

Lush Vanilla Berry Pudding

We love classic banana pudding, but when fresh berries gleam bright at the farmers’ market, this is the custardy, fruity, wafer-filled dessert we’re serving at summer dinner parties.

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats With Brown Butter

This portable, easy dessert is the move for beach days, picnics in the park, and potlucks under the stars. The secret to leveling up the no-bake cereal bars? Peanut butter and toasted milk powder.

Zabaglione

Zabaglione seems fancy, but this custardy mixture of egg yolks, sugar, and booze actually comes together in 15 minutes. As for the topping, opt for store-bought cookies or sliced fruit.

Tiramisu-y Icebox Cake

This almost-classic rendition of tiramisu flips the ratio of its components so you can cut neat slices instead of doling out big scoops.

Brown-Sugar-Braised Pineapple

A little sugar and heat can turn even sad pineapples into juicy gems—and speaking of heat, you can easily cook this dessert on the grill, if that’s already fired up for a backyard cookout.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Go your own way with this freezer-friendly pie. Nearly any store-bought crunchy thing will work for the cookie crust: graham crackers, peanut butter cookies, Oreos, or even fortune cookies.

Stone Fruit Icebox Cake

You only need to turn on your oven for ten minutes for this cake recipe. (That’s to toast some pecans.) Otherwise, all you’re making is whipped cream. Store-bought waffle cookies and dulce de leche and ripe red plums do the heavy lifting here.

S’mores Sandwich Cookies

Layered with chocolate ganache and burnt marshmallow, these playful crème pies cram all of the flavors of s’mores into chewy, mess-free sandwich cookies. Bake the cookies up to 5 days ahead and assemble up to 2 days before your party.

Tropical Trifle With Coconut and Rum

There's a delightful high-low tension to this healthyish summer dessert: fresh tropical fruit (mangoes, bananas) and chia seeds are paired with dollar-a-sleeve cookies.

Blueberry Cobbler

Eight ingredients, ten minutes of active time, and one delightfully fruity summer dessert you’ll remake all season long. Head this way for more blueberry desserts.

Blackberries and Vanilla Cream With Crispy Puff Pastry

Baking off a sheet of puff pastry, then breaking it into shards feels like some sort of illegal magic trick. Tuck those shards into a pillow of cannoli cream and saucy summer berries for one of the easiest—yet somehow most impressive—desserts you’ll make all season.

Strawberry Galette

There are many good things about a galette crust, but on steamy days, perhaps our favorite things are that it should be free-form (no need to fuss over the shape) and the dough requires little handling. And if you prefer peaches and plums, well, there’s a galette for you, too.

Whole Lemon Bars

What happens when a lemon pie and a cookie bar get together? This summer dessert. Using two entire lemons—pith, skin, and all—cranks up the citrus flavor, which is balanced by a shortbread crust.

Easy Cherry Turnovers

A combo of sweet and sour cherries fills these semi-homemade hand pies. If you can’t get your hands on the sour guys, though, no problem; just double the sweets and add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Brown Butter Peach Cobbler

What scratches the same itch as peach pie, but requires less doing? Peach cobbler, also known as a dump cake for its method: Just dump ingredients into a pan. Don’t forget a side of vanilla ice cream.

Apricot Tart With Whiskey-Pecan Frangipane

Celebrate the brief but wondrous apricot season with this simple summer dessert recipe. Both the crust and filling come together in a food processor, so clean-up is a breeze.

Simple Strawberry Shortcakes

The secret is out: We add sour cream to our whipped cream. Just a smidge of the tangy stuff takes the topping for these summer shortcakes from good to great.

BA’s Best Blueberry Pie

This blueberry pie recipe calls for a whopping eight cups of summer-fresh blueberries. And while you can’t beat a lattice top, aesthetically speaking, if you want to make things a little easier, go with a solid-top crust instead.

Ice Cream Cake With So Many Sprinkles

Layer store-bought vanilla and strawberry ice cream with a freshly baked confetti cake for an all-star summer birthday cake—or any other warm weather celebration.

Raspberry Cake With Whipped Cream Filling

Pulverized freeze-dried berries turn whipped cream into a shocking pink, wonderfully tangy frosting for light-as-air chiffon cake. Fresh summer berries are the piece de resistance.

Chocolate and Coconut Cream Pie

Why have chocolate cream pie or coconut cream pie when you can have both at once? It’s an elevated Mounds bar, ideal for a summer dinner party.

A Giant Panna Cotta

This no-bake dessert is make-ahead, large-format, and requires minimal equipment (and therefore minimal cleanup), so we’ll go ahead and say it: A giant panna cotta is the ultimate summer dessert.

Giant Baba Au Rhum

This large-format version of Italy’s classic pastry involves a Bundt-baked brioche dough doused in rum and orange liqueur. It’ll fit right in at your tropical-themed backyard bash.

Grilled Pound Cake Sundae With Raspberries

Our favorite cream cheese pound cake goes from ridiculously good to “Oh, joy! What rapture!” when you grill it and top it with ice cream and liqueur-macerated fresh berries.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Cheesecake Bars

To make the crust for these cheesecake bars, all you need are Triscuit crackers, butter, and sugar. Even those who find Triscuits too salty to eat alone will love how they play against tangy cheesecake and sweet fruit.

Frozen Cookie Dough Pie

Picture this: A deep-dish graham cracker crust topped with whipped ganache, semifreddo chock-full of homemade cookie dough, whipped cream, and chocolate cereal. Now, go make this summer dessert and thank us in the morning.