19 Summer Berry Recipes to Use up All That Juicy Fruit

Walk through any farmers market on a summer day, and you can smell the sweet, intoxicating scent of ripe berries long before you catch a glimpse of them basking in the sunshine, in all their technicolor glory. Stalls call out with baskets of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries—and if you happen to live on the West Coast, there are olallieberries, marionberries, and loganberries, too. You can’t help but load up on all that peak-season fruit. But after a trip like this, sometimes, you get home and realize: a) your eyes were way bigger than your stomach b) fresh berries have a limited shelf-life and c) you need more ways to use up all those precious berries.

Not to worry—we’ve been in your shoes. To assist you on your berry-fueled quest, we’ve assembled some of our most delicious, berry-centric recipes that make the most of your summer haul. There are juicy pies, cobblers, cakes, and shortcakes if you feel like turning on the oven, but we also have plenty of no-bake desserts and drinks to help you stay cool in this heat. With 19 summer berry recipes to go around, you’ll never tire of the summer fruit.

Save to MyRecipes

Love any of these recipes? Tap “Save” to add them to MyRecipes, your new, free recipe box for Serious Eats.

The intoxicating scent of sun-drenched strawberries gets dialed up in this versatile all-purpose jammy compote. Gently simmering the berries in a bit of lemon juice and sugar helps capture the peak-season flavor. Swirl a spoonful into yogurt, layer in an icebox cake, or stash some in the freezer after summer’s end.

Get Recipe: 3-Ingredient Strawberry Compote

This dreamy confection of cookies (or crackers) with creamy stripes of filling looks and tastes just like a layer cake—just without the need for an oven. In this version, inspired by the Fraiser cake, a French classic of sponge cake, pastry cream, and strawberries, we layer vanilla wafer cookies with homemade strawberry compote and cream into a loaf pan, then let it set in the fridge for at least six hours so the compote and cream softens the cookies.

Get Recipe: Strawberry Icebox Cake

This classic summer dessert might just be the Goldilocks of blueberry cobblers. The sweet cornbread complements the bright and floral blueberry filling, while the not-too-thin, not-too-thick filling amplifies the blueberry flavor. Reserve some fresh blueberries after baking to give the golden crust juicy pops of color.

Get Recipe: Blueberry Cornbread Cobbler

What is more quintessential than strawberry shortcakes in the summer? In this classic version, we start with a sweet, cream-enriched dough that rises more than spreads, which results in buttery sugar-crusted biscuits with an ideal height and crumble. Macerating the strawberries for four to eight hours helps produce enough syrup to moisten the shortcakes without drowning them in syrup.

Get Recipe: Strawberry Shortcake

In this summery riff on tiramisu, our Birmingham test kitchen colleague Julia Levy swaps out the traditional coffee soak for a syrup made with honey and culinary-grade matcha that offers gentle sweetness and floral, earthy complexity to balance the brightness of the strawberries. A layer of fresh strawberries simmered with sugar and lemon juice creates a glossy, distinct layer between the mascarpone filling and matcha-soaked ladyfingers.

Get Recipe: Strawberry Matcha Tiramisu

This modern take on the British retro classic will impress at any summer buffet. Wobbly fruit jelly made from tart, flavorful berry-poaching liquor, genoise sponge cake, fresh berries, crème légère, and whipped cream beautifully layer inside a glass bowl. The best part, aside from all the gasps this dessert will inevitably elicit, is that you can make it up to 24 hours ahead.

Get Recipe: Mixed Berry Trifle

Our favorite blueberry pie uses an ideal mix of wild and cultivated berries for incomparable depth of flavor. Tapioca starch and a 4:1 ratio of fruit to sugar helps ensure that the filling cooks at the same rate as the crust, guaranteeing no soggy bottoms!

Get Recipe: The Best Blueberry Pie

Eton mess is one of those British desserts, like the spotted dick, that looks and tastes infinitely better than its name. (It helps that assemblage is easy too.) All that’s required are berries briefly macerated in sugar and lemon zest, whipped cream, and crushed store-bought or homemade meringue cookies. You can build the layers in individual glasses or one big glass bowl like a trifle.

Get Recipe: Eton Mess

If you don’t already own popsicle molds, you’ll want to buy some stat so you can make these sweet, tangy, creamy raspberry-yogurt pops. Simmering fresh raspberries with water, sugar, orange juice, and salt draws out their bright red berry flavors while tempering their tartness. Full-fat Greek yogurt and heavy cream provide the rich, creamy counterpoint to the raspberry purée’s sharpness, acidity, and slight bitterness.

Get Recipe: Raspberry Yogurt Popsicle

To come up with the ultimate strawberry popsicle, we start with a strawberry purée, made from fresh, ripe berries macerated in sugar, lemon juice, and a little salt. We then dial up the flavor by mixing in some strawberry preserves to add a soft, lush texture and deeper, sweeter fruit flavor. Freeze-dried strawberry powder further brightens and intensifies the concentrated strawberry flavor.

Get Recipe: Ultimate Strawberry Popsicles

Sarah Enelow-Snyder created these colorful pops as both a fun project to make with her kids and as a way to teach them the history and meaning behind the Pan-African flag. To create distinct layers, wait until the previous one turns semi-frozen before adding the next one.

Get Recipe: Berry and Kiwi Pan-African Flag Popsicles

Perfecting strawberry ice cream is no easy feat—just ask Max Falkowitz, who dubbed this recipe his “white whale.” Here, Max opts for uncooked fresh, ripe strawberries to preserve their fragrant flavors, then blends the puréed berries with an eggless base of half-and-half and corn syrup to let the strawberry flavor shine and inhibit ice crystal formation. Cutting the berries into small pieces and macerating them in sugar and hard liquor prevents the mix-ins from getting icy.

Get Recipe: The Best Strawberry Ice Cream

This cake’s royal purple color and fruity flavor comes from fresh blackberry purée. Egg whites provide lift, plus a neutral backdrop for the blackberry to shine, while a touch of cinnamon further amplifies the berry’s distinct flavor. Here, the fruit’s acidity acts like buttermilk to make the cake tender and light, and underscores the sweet tanginess of the cream cheese frosting.

Get Recipe: https://www.seriouseats.com/blackberry-cake-recipe

What I love about this dessert, beyond its retro summer vibe and portability, is the delightful combination of textures and flavors. It’s salty-sweet from the pretzel crust, subtly tangy and creamy from the no-bake cheesecake, and bursting with fruity flavors from the jiggly jello that uses syrup with fresh strawberries and lemon juice. Plus, no one can deny it’s so fun to eat!

Get Recipe: Strawberry Pretzel Salad

Unlike strawberry ice cream, blackberry ice cream benefits from cooking the fruit down to highlight the deep and jammy blackberry flavors. This step also removes some water content, which can result in ice crystals in the finished product. Straining out the seeds also helps temper the berry’s natural astringency for a smoother texture.

Get Recipe: Blackberry Ice Cream

Making jam isn’t the only way to preserve the bounty of summer blackberries—try bottling it into liqueur. This infusion takes all of three days, but it’s well worth it for a drink that captures intense berry flavors at the fraction of the cost as store-bought liqueur. Trust us, you’ll be reaching for it to make a bramble or replace the crème de cassis in your favorite diablo.

Get Recipe: Fresh Blackberry Liqueur

A fresh raspberry mint syrup provides the base for this light and low-ABV summer cocktail that can be sipped all summer long. Bonus: Savor all of the ripe, juicy raspberry flavors without needing to pick seeds out of your teeth.

Get Recipe: Raspberry Spritz

If you had to choose one preserve type to make this summer, let it be this strawberry jam. We’ve laid out a foolproof formula that allows you to customize the jam to your desires. Replace a few strawberries with prosecco or rhubarb, swap lemon juice for balsamic vinegar, spice it up with black pepper, or shake in commercial low-sugar pectin for a brighter, fruitier jam. Just imagine how much this flavorful homemade strawberry jam will improve your fruit-swirled ice cream sandwiches or poke cake.

Get Recipe: Perfect Strawberry Preserves

Sweet blueberries and blackberries provide the perfect foil for the aggressive heat of habanero peppers. Rich in sugar and surface microbes, the berries help jump-start lacto-fermentation and underscore the inherent fruitiness of the habanero. Plus, the juicy berries lend much-needed moisture to the pepper mash, which typically comes as thin-skinned and relatively dry.

Get Recipe: Habanero Fermented Hot Sauce With Berries

Read the original article on Serious Eats