10 Favorite Summer Fruit Desserts

Desserts featuring summer fruits need very little promotion. Most of the ones I make allow the fruits to be the stars without an excess of additional flavorings or undue complexity. While there’s much more of this delicious seasonal world to explore and I don’t intend to stop, I’m also still happy with the good recipes I’ve already posted.

Here are my 10 favorite summer fruit desserts from The Messy Apron Archives. After laying out a list and paring it down to 10 (leaving out the rhubarb desserts, even though rhubarb is still very much “in season”), I found that these recipes fell into three rough categories: pies and tarts, cakes, and, well, everything else.

Cakes can be an easy place for fruits to star, especially if you use a simple batter and let the fruits do most of the flavoring. For quick simplicity and improvisational variety, I like this White Cake with Berries and Lemon Glaze.

This Cherry Almond Loaf Cake, which comes together in the food processor, is just as easy.

A little more effort can really feature some perfect plums in this Plum Upside-Down Yogurt Cake.

I all too often shy away from making my own pie crust (mostly out of laziness, but sometimes because I really don’t have the time.) These first two favorite pies can be made with store-bought pie crust dough, so you can get to the fruit filling faster.

Open Face Blueberry Pie is the best use I can think of for an abundance of fresh blueberries.

Plum and Grape Galette with Almonds is really great when made with the tiny, fabulously delicious grapes I can get in the late summer.

Part of the mixture used for the crust in both Apricot Raspberry Tart with Crumble Topping 

and Apricot Strawberry Tart is held aside to become a crumble topping. These tarts are quite similar, but both are delicious enough to be listed separately. Take your pick!

My “and the rest” category includes three quite different styles of dessert. Cherry Plum Crisp is ripe and delicious, fruit crisp at its finest. I think, however, that you could substitute other in-season stone fruits for the cherries and/or plums.

Cherry Clafouti (you might also see “Clafoutis”) is somewhat like a cherry-studded cake, but it’s also custard-like enough to keep it out of the cake category. You can also use the basic clafouti method with other fruits. (I’ve even made this savory version with the “fruits” of the tomato vine.)

Finally, Sweet Melon Soup with Mint and Midori is a chilled soup, sweet and refreshing. It’s the only recipe on this list that doesn’t require the use of an oven, perfect for too-hot-to-bake summer days. 

Of course, just biting into a perfect peach, or munching on a handful of berries or cherries while fanning yourself on the porch is dessert enough when the days are hot and the fruit is good. It’s the one time I can get on board with folks who are happy with “just a piece of fruit” for dessert. Until I find the next exciting recipe, that is!

One year ago: Buttermilk Herb Salad Dressing