9 Beat-the-Heat Summer Treats
Keep your cool with these refreshing pies, chilled drinks and more featuring the season's most colorful, juicy-ripe ingredients.
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Black Forest Freezer Pie
This layered dessert combines cream cheese, powdered sugar and whipped dessert topping over vanilla ice cream in a graham cracker crust. When you're ready to serve the pie, spoon on cherry pie filling, and drizzle with fudge topping. The recipe is from Friske's Farm Market near Ellsworth, Michigan.
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Apricot-Cheesecake Frozen Pops
Blend canned apricots or peaches with yogurt, honey, lemon juice, and crushed shortbread cookies for a homemade Popsicle treat.
Cool tip If you don't use actual Popsicle molds, freeze pops in silicone muffin cups; their soft sides make it easy to remove the treat. If metal muffin cups are all you have, line them with paper bake cups before spooning in the mixture and adding the sticks.
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Cherry-Berry Smoothie
This quick-and-easy blender drink, from the Michigan Cherry Committee, combines cherries, milk, yogurt, blueberries or raspberries, juice concentrate, honey and vanilla.
Cool tip Blender freeze-ups happen when there's not enough liquid around frozen ingredients. To solve the problem, pour liquids and soft ingredients into the blender first, then add the frozen stuff on top and blend. Still stuck? Pour in some juice or milk, then cover and blend again.
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Very Blueberry Pie
This easy-to-make pie, from Sandy Bottom Berries of Rockford, Michigan, calls for pouring a warm sugar glaze over a generous amount of fresh blueberries or raspberries.
Cool tip For more blueberry flavor, choose berries with the familiar gray-blue color--without a hint of red, which indicates underripeness. Berries won't get any riper after they're picked.
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Choose-a-Fruit Scoops
Blueberries, blackberries, red raspberries, peaches or nectarines--take your pick for color and refreshing flavor in this ice cream.
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Peach Cake Roll
Based on a recipe from Michigan Peach Sponsors, this cake roll is a flavor chameleon. Swirl in any ice cream you like, and top the cake with any complementary fruit.
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Tangy Cherry-Tea Sorbet
You can blend this dessert in just a couple of minutes by combining unsweetened ice tea mix, frozen tart red cherries, lemon juice, sugar and water. Serve immediately, or pour into a dish and freeze for later. The sorbet recipe comes from the Michigan Cherry Committee.
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Black-Raspberry-Chip Gelato
You can use fresh black raspberries, blackberries, red raspberries, strawberries or blueberries in this rich gelato.
Cool tip Can't tell a blackberry from a black raspberry? The core of the black raspberry stays on the plant when picked, leaving the familiar hollow in each berry, just like red raspberries.
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Strawberry Lemonade
Fresh strawberries, sugar and lemon juice flavor this easy blender drink. Garnish with strawberry and lemon slices for a pretty presentation.
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