For me, the last two weeks before going back to school was always the best part of the summer: the last chance for picnics at the lake, drowsy days on the farm accompanied by the sounds of buzzing insects and chirping birds, and adventures – little adventures. There was the time we climbed one of my uncle’s apple trees and ate so many green apples we all got sick. We rolled around at the base of the tree, moaning in unison. And the time we went to pick blackberries in the woods behind the farm and got so enmeshed in the mosquito-laden brambles that we barely found our way home. We were sweaty and covered in bites – and didn’t bring back much fruit – but it was an adventure.

With my own kids, living in the city, I tried to make the last days before school as special as possible – swimming and popsicles at the local pool every day, baking fruit crumbles and other late-summer specialties that helped teach them the value of seasonality in cooking, and always apple-picking. A big fresh apple after a summer of mealy holdovers from the winter was a notable experience, and it was a thrill to go to a local orchard and hold the girls up high in the branches so they could pick apples themselves.

That’s why when I saw this recipe I knew it was just the thing to make a late-summer memory. It’s healthy (homemade yogurt ice cream on fresh sliced apples,) it tastes great, and best of all, it’s very, very messy. These ice cream sandwiches are meant to be eaten outside, hopefully not too far from a hose or a pool. You must remember that feeling: hot and sweaty meets messy and cold and delicious. It’s a little adventure.

Apple and Yogurt Ice Cream Sandwiches
Adapted from Donna Hay’s Life in Balance
Prep time: 45 minutes to chill the yogurt ice cream before assembling plus 3 hours to freeze the yogurt until solid
Serves: 4

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Since time immemorial, it’s accepted in tropical parts of the world that eating something hot when temperatures are high will make you feel cooler. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but there’s science behind it. Ingesting hot stuff makes you sweat, which is the body’s natural way of cooling off. Also, there are chemicals in some foods, like chili peppers, that react to our body chemistry and make us sweat more – and then cool off.

Ginger snaps are my favorite cookie, so as we swelter through this ‘worst-that-I can-remember-in-forty-years’ summer in Washington, I realize it might be time to start thinking about changing how we eat to accommodate these weather changes. I took my favorite ginger snap recipe and made several half batches, adding varying amounts of chili powder to find just the right amount of heat to get the body glowing and cooling off. I really like these; in fact they may be the first cookie meant to be paired with a beer.

Ginger Snaps for Global Warming
Prep time: 45 minutes
Makes: 2 dozen large cookies

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**Spoiler alert** BEST RECIPE OF THE SUMMER SO FAR!

You say you love to grill out? Here’s a ‘dessert on the grill’ recipe with panache. I love this cake because you can prep it, pack it up, and take it to a beach picnic, barbecue, or the park – any place that has a (clean) grill for the last-minute prep. It’s a summer novelty that can be eaten multiple ways, as a plain chocolate cupcake for purists, a lovely grilled and caramelized chocolate cupcake, or – as its highest and best self – a mouthwatering caramelized cupcake with serious vanilla ice cream melting on top.

I made these in cupcake form because most people have cupcake tins in their kitchen so it’s easy to do, but you can use small cake pans just as easily. The object is to get plenty of the cupcakes’ surface sprinkled with sugar just before grilling, and then into the heat. That caramelizes the sugar into the chocolate, giving it a nice crunch. And then you need a dollop of vanilla ice cream; for that I love Blue Bunny’s All-Natural Vanilla Ice Cream. This is vanilla ice cream as God intended, with a flavor that matches the strength of the chocolate.

Note: vanilla ice cream gets a bad rap because people think it’s blah, but good vanilla ice cream is rich and distinctive, and fully the equal of any other flavor. Spend a little more and buy the good stuff.
(You’re worth it.)

Grilled Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes
Adapted from Malibu Farm Cookbook
Serves: Makes a dozen large cupcakes
Prep time: 45 minutes to bake, ten minutes to prep on the grill

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Do you all know who Donna Hay is? Her cookbooks are my favorite, because everything is beautiful and inventive. She takes a familiar recipe, adds an unexpected ingredient or two, and all of a sudden there’s this amazing thing you can’t wait to eat. Blackberry elderflower pie is one of her recipes.

Blackberry pie is a familiar summer dessert, but when zhuzshed up with a little elderflower liqueur and the addition of ground pistachios in the crust, it becomes a next-level blackberry pie. It got a very big response at home too, because pies are not a part of daily life for us.

Note: This is a wet pie, meaning you shouldn’t expect the filling to sit nice and firm on the crust. That’s not uncommon with fruit pies and the alternative is to use a lot more arrowroot or cornstarch to thicken the filling, but you will taste the thickener and it will dampen the flavor of the fruit, so I chose flavor over presentation here.

It’s a good exercise to look back at your old, favorite recipes and make them again. You might be surprised by the memories they bring back for you and your family and friends. Food memories are some of the strongest and most positive memories we have. What are some of yours?

Blackberry Elderflower Pie
Adapted from Donna Hay Modern Baking
Serves: 6-8
Prep time: 2 hours

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There’s an English dessert called Knickerbocker Glory – a lot like an American ice cream sundae but with lots of delectable summer fruits. I came upon Mary Berry’s recipe for a Knickerbocker Glory a while ago and filed it away for future reference, and then the other day I came upon a recipe for a healthy version of a Knickerbocker Glory and knew I had to try them both.

So you choose – the gooey, delicious, caloric version with fresh mango and raspberry puree, or the clean eating version: granola, fresh fruit, and froyo. You can see from the photos that it’s hard to tell them apart. Honestly, they’re both so good!

Knickerbocker Glory
Adapted from a recipe by Mary Berry

Version 1
Serves: 4
Prep time: 30 minutes

Version 2
Serves: 2
Prep time: 10 minutes

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