Beat The Heat: 10 No-Bake Desserts For Summer

Summer’s here, and we’re celebrating! There’s a good chance you’ll catch us in our back gardens playing hopscotch, running through the sprinkler and looking for shapes in the clouds.

If you’re anything like us, you probably won’t be up for slaving behind the stove much either – a barbecue or a bit of stirring in a pan is about all we can muster when the weather’s playing nice. That’s where these no-bake, no-sweat desserts come in. With the sweet goodies on this list, you’ll make the most of the abundance of ripe summer berries and the power of your fridge-freezer, all while keeping your cool.

Strawberry Semifreddo
Strawberries say ‘summer’ like no other fruit. Irish TV chef Donal Skehan takes us through a few easy steps to make a luscious, creamy semifreddo with a strawberry purée ripple, seedless strawberry jam and fresh strawberries. Granted, it needs a good six hours in the freezer, but otherwise, it’s a doddle to make. And if you can’t be bothered, just watch the video and drool over Donal’s delectable Irish lilt.

Vegan Chocolate Mousse
Lads like twins Dave and Steve of The Happy Pear have done wonders to shift the image of vegan food from hippy-dippy to ultra-cool. For this vegan chocolate mousse, they have a trick up their sleeves that sees them creating a creamy, smooth dark chocolate mousse in a matter of minutes, using only two ingredients: plant-based milk and, you guessed it, dark chocolate. You won’t believe how easy it is.

Layered Watermelon Popsicles
These vegan watermelon popsicles are perfect if you want to impress your guests. A bit more of a project than most recipes in this list, you need to set aside the afternoon. You’ll mostly be waiting for the layers to freeze, though, so you can get your lounger out and doze in the sun between steps. For a purely plant-based popsicle, be sure to use vegan chocolate chips.

No-Bake Raspberry Cheesecake
This light and airy no-bake cheesecake is such a pretty pink colour, you may think there’s some colouring agent involved. But nope. It’s all down to the raspberries. The instructions are easy as pie: make a biscuit base, whip up a filling, and add it to a springform pan in the correct order (that’s biscuit base first, in case you were wondering). Then you chill in the garden while the cheesecake chills in the fridge. 

Creamy Banana Pudding
“Fat is flavour,” Gemma from Bigger Bolder Baking reveals in the very first minute of this video. In it, she makes an American classic: banana pudding. Part baker, part science teacher, Gemma expertly explains what happens to the different ingredients as they meet and merge, making her video into a mini cookery course, with a delicious pudding as a reward at the end. 

Eton Mess
Eton Mess tops the charts as summer’s easiest homemade dessert. Cupcake Jemma’s version has five ingredients only – three if you forego the homemade raspberry sauce and just use meringues, strawberries and cream. Even better, there is no arduous assembling to be done at the end: just stir the lot together, dollop into a dessert bowl or glass, and tuck in. If you’re a proper baker like Jemma, you may be tempted to make the meringues yourself, but that would require an oven – so shop-bought meringues it is. Not that we’re complaining.

Fruit Sorbets
For summer in a scoop, try a homemade fruit sorbet. This recipe video shows you how to make not one, but five different vegan sorbet flavours in under seven minutes: very berry, piña colada, cucumber & melon, mango & raspberry, and peach & basil. Clear out your freezer, make a big batch, and you’re all set for summer.

Griddled Pineapple With Spiced Caramel
It’s a simple summer sum: pineapple plus griddle equals delicious dessert. In this recipe, the pineapple gets given the Gordon Ramsay treatment by adding a caramel sauce flavoured with Chinese five-spice powder. In his usual staccato style, Gordon gives you a few clever tips along the way, including how to know your pineapple is ripe and how to get great griddle marks on your fruit. 

Strawberry Milk
Okay, so we know what you’re thinking: strawberry milk isn’t really a dessert. But this video for fresh, café-worthy Korean strawberry milk is so mesmerising, and the subtitles are so funny and sweet… there was no way to leave it out of this line-up. And let’s be honest, who hasn’t had a milkshake for dessert once or twice? See? Not so far-fetched, after all.

Vegan Crème Caramel
Crème caramel is the perfect summer dessert for those of us who aren’t into frozen stuff. It’s rich and creamy, but also nice and cold. Thanks to Gaz Oakly, plant-based chef extraordinaire, even vegans can now enjoy this sweet Mediterranean staple. Gaz is using simple supermarket ingredients only in his concoction, like soy cream, soy milk, maple syrup and cornflour. Sounds doable, even on a hot day.