Quick and Easy Summer Dessert Recipes

Summer has hit my town with a vengeance and I’m always in the market for something cool and tasty on a summer day. Following are a couple of easy desserts you can make when you’re in the mood for something sweet, light and cold:

Quick Blueberry Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups frozen blue erries
¼ cup Splenda granular (or sugar)
½ cup milk or ½ cup cream
½ teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Pulse frozen berries in a food processor until chopped fine. Add sugar or Splenda while the fruits are processing. Add milk or cream and vanilla (toward the end). Process until mixture is of ice cream consistency. Serve immediately.

You can use other fruit, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, blackberries and so on. Be creative.

Blueberry Fruit Ice

Ingredients:

16 ounces frozen whole unsweetened blueberries
1 orange, juice and zest of
1 lemon, juice and zest of
1 cup Splenda granular (or sugar)

Thaw the blueberries slightly by letting them sit in a bowl at room temp for about 20 minutes.

Remove wide strips of zest from the orange and lemon with a vegetable peeler or zester. Combine the Splenda with ½ cup water in a small saucepan and add the citrus zests and juices. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 5 minutes. Allow the syrup to cool a bit, (for faster cooling, put the pan in a bowl of ice, it should cool off in about five minutes) and then strain the mixture, discarding the peels.

Put the semi-thawed blueberries in the food processor and pulse for a few seconds, then add ½ cup of the citrus syrup, and pulse until a nearly smooth. Add more syrup as needed to get the consistency you like. Then transfer the puree to a bowl or individual serving cups and freeze 2-3 hours, until firm. To serve, let stand at room temperature 15-20 minutes to soften slightly, scrape across the fruit ice with a large spoon, and place into serving dishes.

Again, you can change up the fruit and if you have Popsicle molds this might be a real hit on a stick.

Enjoy!

Writer Chick