12 easy summer desserts, cakes and cookies

There’s no pretending otherwise: here at A Good Table, we are a community of the sweet-toothed. Summer is my favorite season to make desserts, if only because the local farmers’ market does most of the work for me — the fruit comes in so ripe and so full of flavor, that you’d have to try quite hard to go wrong. I still think about a meal I had at Chez Panisse last year, right at the first edge of summer. Ice creams, sorbets, fruit galettes, panna cottas: I could happily have ordered my way through the entire dessert menu and left without a single regret.

So today I’ve compiled a list of summer desserts that deserve their moment in the sun, before autumn makes its golden appearance. There are loaf cakes, ice creams, cookies and plenty in between.

Since developing this blueberry cheesecake recipe, I’ve made these cupcakes for birthday parties, BBQs, random Saturday nights and it is always a favorite. This dessert is a hybrid between a blueberry cheesecake, a fruit cobbler (or crumble for my British readers), and a classic cupcake. The super light sponge is threaded with blueberries, then crowned with a delicious vanilla cream cheese frosting, jammy blueberry compote, and an optional, though rather essential, sweet and salty pecan crumble.

Gosh, I must have made a hundred versions of lemon meringue cake, but never using the slightly eccentric technique featured here. The meringue is dramatically swirled through the batter before baking, leaving marshmallowy chewy seams threaded through the super tender crumb and a sugary crust around the edges.

This cake begins with the sort of effortless one-bowl batter that feels almost too simple for something so delicious. Wonderfully fragrant with cardamom (my favorite spice) and studded with pistachios, it is crowned with a softly whipped strawberry cream, somewhere between cheesecake and Chantilly. Deliberately not too sweet, it is the sort of cake best eaten in the afternoon with a cup of tea. A very English ritual.

I love a good galette, and this one is super easy. A free-form tart filled with soft almond frangipane and syrupy sumac strawberries. A summer dessert worth turning the oven on for.

Another strawberry cake, and you really MUST make this one! Strawberry sumac olive oil cake feels like a very appropriate dessert for a late-summer BBQ. It can be made in advance, and it’s one of those cakes that tastes just as good, slightly warm, as it does a day or two later. This cake is studded with syrupy strawberries that bake into the crumb, then brushed and drizzled with a tangy strawberry–sumac syrup while still warm. I like to serve the cake with a generous cloud of salted, vanilla-infused, whipped yogurt and cream, topped with plenty of fresh, sweet strawberries.

What could be better than figgy pistachio rice pudding? Lately, I’ve been devouring late-summer figs. Their skins are like soft leather, flushed in shades of dark rose and aubergine, while inside they are sticky, dense and jammy. I find them impossible to resist. Here, the pan-fried figs are spooned over warm, spiced rice pudding with a generous swirl of homemade pistachio butter. It is an ambrosial combination, and the pistachio butter is far easier to make than it sounds. You need only pistachios, a food processor and enough patience to watch them transform into a smooth, glossy paste.

Part tiramisu, part cookie-jar raid, this dessert is nostalgic and grown-up all at once. The dark, bittersweet pull of coffee meets the caramel warmth of a chocolate chip cookie, while airy whipped mascarpone cream draws everything together into something softer. This is a make-ahead sort of pudding and keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. It is just as suited to an outdoor barbecue gathering or family table as it is to a quieter moment: a Friday night, an empty kitchen, no plans at all. In that case, make it for yourself and eat it whenever the mood strikes, albeit straight from the fridge.

For me, this dessert is steeped in nostalgia, having appeared at nearly every dinner party of my childhood. It was such a crowd-pleaser that my mother made it regularly, often as part of an astonishingly assorted spread. She rarely served fewer than three or four puddings: tiramisu or limoncello trifle, perhaps a glossy chocolate cake or apple strudel, a cloud-like pavlova piled with fruit, and always, always, these amaretti peaches.

As a child, I grew tired of them. While the grown-ups lingered over espresso and reached for second helpings, I sat dreaming of chocolate bars or a paper bag of lurid, fluorescent sweeties.

But, of course, my tastes have since changed and, dare I say it, matured.

Peaches filled and baked with amaretti is a classic dessert from northern Italy: subtle, restrained and perfectly seasonal. As the ripe fruit softens and caramelizes in the oven, the amaretti and pistachio crumble turns buttery, crisp and golden. There is warmth here, not only from the cinnamon and honey, but from the sense that this is a dessert meant to be shared.

My husband’s favorite late summer dessert and a summer classic. This cinnamon-sugar peach cornbread project should not be rushed. The peaches should be ripe and soft, the cornmeal fresh and nutty, and the butter rich enough to carry both the sweetness and the lingering whisper of cinnamon spice.

Not everyone has an ice cream machine, and that’s okay because you simply don’t need one! My no-churn peach cobbler ice cream has been made on repeat this summer. It has soft, buttery peaches cooked until their juices turn to bourbon-scented caramel, generous rubble-like pieces of sweet and salty pecan crumble and a vanilla ice cream base that requires no custard, no machine and no unnecessary fiddling

Looking for a guaranteed crowd-pleaser for your next summer dinner party? Look no further than the humble chocolate chip cookie. I can hear the skepticism - baking in the height of summer? But here’s the secret: you can prepare the dough weeks, even months, in advance and keep it frozen. With just 12-14 minutes in the oven, you have fresh, warm cookies ready to serve. I recently took a batch of my malted chocolate chip cookies to my nan’s 92nd birthday celebration; they were an instant hit, vanishing from the table before any other dessert.

So, this is not technically a dessert, but sweet, spicy, savory and far too good to leave out. This recipe began, as many good things do, with an intense craving. I wanted something sweet and savory and refused to choose, so I pan-fried the peaches until soft and deeply caramelized, then tucked them into a grilled cheese sandwich with a generous drizzle of hot honey. Oh my.

What are you cooking right now and do you have any summer cooking tips? As usual I love to hear from you all, so feel free to leave a comment.

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