Fresh fruit at the peak of ripeness is one of the biggest bargains in the supermarket during the summer and weeks leading up to it. Exotic fruits, which just months ago might have broken the bank by being flown in from faraway locales, are better for you when in season and grown locally.
Fruit is so sweet it's the perfect summer dessert ingredient, along with choices like whole-grain cookies and sugar-free ice creams. The selections are even better when overlapping, such as one-of-a-kind frozen sandwiches made from special bakery cookies, fresh berries and fancy ice cream flavors, or grilled peaches filled with lemon sorbet and lemon ice and topped with granola.
Food preparation at any time of year can be easy, nutritious, inexpensive, fun — and fast — as the following split-second sensations prove. They take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare. The dishes are delicious proof that everyone has time for tasty home cooking and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it!
Another benefit: You effortlessly become a better cook, since there are no right or wrong amounts. These are can't-go-wrong combinations, so whatever you choose to use can't help but draw "wows" from both family and guests whether inside your kitchen or outside on your patio.
SUMMER DESSERTS: FRUIT
Much More Than Just an Empty Shell: Make a splash by having more than just one fruit as a serving shell and filling it with more exotic treats than just the cut-up fruit. On a buffet line, fill not only a watermelon, but cantaloupes, grapefruits, pineapples and even kiwis.
Slice off the bottoms to make flat, scoop out pulp and use to blend into a dressing for the fruit salad and fill with a refreshing either homemade or store-bought cherry ice topped with sweetened coconut.
Hypnotizing Icy-Hot Choices: Grill apples, pears, peaches or nectarines, and while hot just before serving, carefully fill with a combination of both creamy lemon sorbet and lemon ice. Then top with granola.
SUMMER DESSERTS: FROZEN
Great Grapes: Freeze a blend of green and red seedless grapes. Use as exotic ice cubes in ice teas, made from super blends now available in most supermarkets.
Or let the grapes defrost a bit and mash into a slushy dessert "salsa" into which you dip treats like graham crackers, gingersnaps or chocolate sandwich cookies.
Scintillating Sandwiches: Often, plain cookies and ice cream flavors make up ice cream sandwiches. Switch that up with special bakery cookies and exotic ice creams for rousing results. Bottega Louie, for instance, a popular restaurant/bakery in downtown Los Angeles, serves flat, large flavored macaroons stuffed with vanilla bean ice cream and studded with fresh raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.
SUMMER DESSERTS: LIQUID
Smooth as Silk Smoothie Buffet: At juice bars, smoothies are often served up without the custom choices of the recipient. For your next family meal or shindig, set out a smoothie buffet with various fruits, grains and nuts (the aforementioned become powders in the blender just creating more flavor and adding additional nutrients and fiber) and sweet treats, like whole-grain cookie crumbs and no-sugar-added chocolate chips.
Fun Foundations: Use 100 percent juice kid-friendly blend flavors as the bases for tantalizing combinations with fresh fruit. Juicy Juice brand kiwi-strawberry, for instance, blended with banana and coconut milk becomes a tropical delight. Welch's Essentials white grape-peach-mango is a nutritional powerhouse and only becomes more so when choices like fresh nectarine and plum slices are blended in. It's a fun way to introduce new flavors to kids, too, like Welch's guava-pineapple. If available in you region, use the opportunity to show off a real guava and blend it into a fun after-meal treat with the juice.
PEANUT BUTTER-BERRY FROZEN YOGURT SANDWICH COOKIES
4 1/2 cups total of both vanilla and chocolate frozen yogurt, softened
Fresh chopped strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, to taste
36 homemade or store-bought peanut butter cookies
Chopped nuts, chopped candy and chocolate chips, to taste, to stud borders of ice cream sandwiches
Yields 18 servings.
Divide the frozen yogurt into thirds and gently stir in one variety of berry into each third.
For each frozen yogurt sandwich cookie, press about 1/4 cup frozen yogurt-berry mixture between two cookies. Roll one third of sandwich cookies in chopped nuts, one third in chopped candy and one third in chocolate chips.
Wrap sandwiches individually in plastic wrap. Freeze about 30 minutes, or until firm. Store in freezer.
—Adapted from BettyCrocker.com
Photo courtesy of BettyCrocker.com
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Creators News Service "Cooks' Books" column. To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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