In the heat of summer, there’s nothing quite like a frozen dessert to cool you off. There’s just something about ice cream, popsicles, sorbet, and other frozen goodies that revitalizes our energy in hot weather. Plus, most frozen treats don’t require any baking either, meaning your house stays cooler and the air conditioning bill stays low.
Most frozen desserts can — or must be — made ahead, making them great for parties, backyard cookouts, and summer entertaining. When you’re looking for something sweet and need to cool off, try one of these no-bake desserts.
Icebox Cake
One of the simplest and most decadent chilled dessert recipes online is simply called the icebox cake. It layers chocolate wafer cookies with copious amounts of whipped cream. Kept in the fridge or freezer overnight, the wafers soften and meld with the cream, making a sliceable cake. If you’ve frozen it, let it thaw a bit for easier slicing.
Recipe: Smitten Kitchen
Lemonade Icebox Pie
Lemonade in a dessert is just as refreshing in summer as it is in a glass. Frozen lemonade pie is a classic recipe, made with frozen lemonade concentrate, whipped cream, and sweetened condensed milk in a graham cracker crust. It’s tart and sweet. Use pink lemonade concentrate for a pretty alternative!
Recipe: Taste of Home
Chunky Monkey Popsicles
Chocolate, banana, and peanut butter is an irresistible combination, no matter what form it takes. Get yourself a popsicle mold and turn those ingredients into chunky monkey pops. Sliced bananas and a homemade chocolate shell coating make them look like they took a lot more effort than they did.
Recipe: Kiwi and Carrot
Homemade Dole Whip
Have you ever had the pineapple-based soft serve treat called Dole Whip? It’s especially popular in the Disney theme parks, where it’s been served for a long time. There’s a lot of copycat recipes for it out there, but this one uses banana and coconut milk as well. It’s dairy- and gluten-free, too.
Recipe: Epicurious
Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cake
This chocolate peanut-butter ice cream cake is super rich and satisfying. Start with a chocolate wafer crust, then add chocolate ice cream with peanut butter mixed in. And to finish it, add a homemade, beautiful chocolate shell and crushed peanuts. Make it in a springform pan for easy removal and cutting.
Recipe: Half Baked Harvest
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Peach Frozen Yogurt
Fresh peaches are at their peak in summer, and when it’s too hot to make anymore cobbler or pie, try your hand at peach frozen yogurt instead. This recipe doesn’t require an ice cream maker, just a food processor or blender. It’s made primarily of frozen peaches, plus some Greek yogurt and honey to bring it all together. Eat it right away or freeze for another time.
Recipe: A Sweet Pea Chef
Pickled Gingery Plums
If you’ve got a plum tree in your yard that always has an overabundance of fruit, try this unusual recipe for pickled gingery plums served over vanilla ice cream. The sliced fruit is pickled for a couple days in a mix of rice vinegar, honey, and spices like ginger, thyme, and vanilla. With vanilla ice cream, it’s sweet, tart, and full of flavor.
Recipe: Country Living
Rumchata Cheesecake Pudding Shots
This one is for the adults! Rumchata, a creamy, cinnamon-flavored alcohol, is mixed with cheesecake flavored instant pudding and Cool Whip. It’s served in small glasses, as a shot would be, but you can easily make small pudding popsicles or a frozen pie out of the mix, too.
Recipe: My Baking Addiction
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Mocha Pecan Ice Cream Bonbons
Chocolate-covered ice cream bonbons are a great freezer staple when the weather’s hot. You can just grab one whenever you need to chill out. This recipe includes an extra step of rolling the ice cream in chopped toasted pecans for a great crunch. Use whatever ice cream you like, but with pecans and coffee in the chocolate, caramel or toffee would be fantastic.
Recipe: Taste of Home
Fudgy Ice Cream Cake
There’s no actual cake in this fudgy ice cream cake, but what there is a lot of is homemade fudge sauce. It’s the only thing that needs heating, and it’s fast work on the stove. It’s layered with graham crackers and vanilla ice cream, plus lots of whipped cream and more warm fudge on top.
Recipe: Martha Stewart
Cantaloupe and Black Pepper Granita
This sophisticated cantaloupe and black pepper granita is for adults only, since it includes wine as an ingredient. Blend the fruit, sugar, and wine to puree it, then freeze it. Scraping the mixture with a fork every half hour as it freezes will turn it into a fluffy, shaved ice-like dessert.
Recipe: Epicurious
Sugar Wafer Neapolitan Ice Cream Cake
Who needs graham crackers when you can use sugar wafer cookies instead? This Neapolitan ice cream cake stands chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry sugar wafers on end with vanilla ice cream acting as mortar in between. The result is a colorful dessert that’s reminiscent of eating an old-fashioned ice cream cone.
Recipe: Food Network
Tropical Yogurt Bark
This recipe makes a great summer snack or dessert, and is endlessly customizable. Greek yogurt and fruit are pureed, then spread in a pan. Add chopped fruit toppings, nuts, chocolate, or other goodies on top, then freeze. It breaks apart like candy bark when it’s frozen, so you can keep it in a bag in the freezer and pull out a chunk any time.
Recipe: Tasty
Apricot Rice Pudding Pops
This is an unusual take on popsicles, made with a simple rice pudding, spices, and apricots. Southeast Asian flavors of lemongrass and ginger and are infused into the coconut milk rice pudding. Dried apricots add pops of color and texture.
Recipe: Bon Appetit
Frozen Snickerdoodle Crunch Cake
Frozen crunch cakes layer ice cream or cheesecake filling between two generous layers of crunchy bits, like crushed cereal, cookies, or granola. This snickerdoodle version uses Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal with extra cinnamon for good measure. The filling is a simple mix of cream cheese, condensed milk, cinnamon chips, and whipped topping.
Recipe: Tablespoon
No-Churn Watermelon Ice Cream Slices
For a unique new way of serving watermelon, start by pureeing the flesh right inside the rind with an immersion blender. Take some of that juice and mix it with creamy condensed milk and whipped cream, then freeze it solid in the hollow watermelon shell. When you slice it, you’ll have watermelon ice cream where the fruit used to be for a surprise no one will expect.
Recipe: Food Network
Grilled Pineapple Sundaes
After you’re finished grilling burgers and hot dogs at your next cookout, throw some pineapple slices on for grilled pineapple sundaes. The light charring caramelizes the sugar in the fruit and brings out its sweetness. Top a slice or two with ice cream and a drizzle of dulce de leche.
Recipe: Taste of Home
7-Layer Ice Cream Cake
Leave it to Martha Stewart to turn something that sounds really complicated like a 7-layer ice cream cake into something that’s actually really simple. It starts with a frozen pound cake that’s cut horizontally into slices and layered with raspberry sorbet, ice cream and chocolate cookies, with a mound of meringue on top. The colorful slices are impressive enough for a dinner party, though it’s hardly any work at all.
Recipe: Martha Stewart
Mini Frozen Key Lime Pies
Mini desserts are adorable, and better yet, they’re perfect for grabbing one right out of the freezer when you need a little pick-me-up. These mini frozen key lime pies are tart and citrusy, and made with lots of fresh lime zest to really punch up the flavor. Keep some in your freezer all summer long.
Recipe: Epicurious
Strawberry Cheesecake Shakes
If you have an abundance of fresh summer strawberries, there’s not much better way to use them up than in milkshakes. This strawberry cheesecake version includes cream cheese for a little tang and is sweetened with condensed milk to up the creaminess. Fresh strawberries and strawberry ice cream are a double dose of fruit.
Recipe: Laura in the Kitchen
Banana Pudding Pops
It’s the same ingredients as classic banana pudding, just frozen in popsicle form. How could that be anything but amazing?
Recipe: Crayons & Cravings
Choco Taco-Inspired Ice Cream Sandwiches
Everyone loves Choco Tacos, the ice cream truck novelty. You can make your own version; all you need is a pizzelle or waffle-cone iron to make the shell. Once they’re shaped and cooled, coat the inside with chocolate to keep them from getting soggy, then fill them with whatever ice cream you like.
Recipe: Tasting Table
Lemon-Raspberry Semifreddo
Lemon and raspberry is a classic combo that makes this semifreddo — a frozen mousse — light and refreshing in summer. Whipped cream is blended with tart store-bought lemon curd, then spread in a loaf pan. A layer of ladyfingers dipped in raspberry puree adds a pop of color and bright flavor.
Recipe: Martha Stewart
Frozen Strawberry Cheesecake
This ingenious recipe for frozen strawberry cheesecake starts with strawberry ice cream and a store-bought cheesecake. Soften the ice cream, then break chunks of cheesecake right into it. When it’s frozen, there will be hunks of cheesecake dotting the entire thing. Fresh strawberries are turned into a quick sauce to pour on top.
Recipe: Food Network
3-Ingredient Ginger Peach Ice Cream Floats
Any kind of ice cream float is a fun, easy way to end a summer meal. But these ginger peach floats take it to the next level, even with only three ingredients. Fresh peach wedges are poached in ginger beer, then topped with vanilla ice cream and more ginger beer. It’s a unique float that’s not too sweet, with a great bite from the ginger.
Recipe: Epicurious
Frozen Samoa Pie
Whether you call them Samoas or Caramel Delites, everyone loves the coconut, caramel, and chocolate cookie from the Girl Scouts. Those same flavors combine in this pie, along with vanilla ice cream in a Nilla Wafer crust. Toasted coconut, gooey caramel and chocolate drizzle decorate the top.
Recipe: My Baking Addiction
Berry Frosé Ice Pops
Frozen rosé wine, also known as frosé, is really popular right now. Instead of drinking it though, you can eat it in popsicle form as frosé ice pops. All you have to do is pour rosé into a popsicle mold, but these pops go one step further by adding fresh berries. It makes the pops tasty as well as beautiful.
Recipe: The Kitchn
Banana Split Ice Cream Dessert
Banana splits are terrific, but they can’t be made ahead and they don’t feed that many people. This banana split ice cream dessert solves both those problems, assembling all the ingredients of a banana split into a 9-by-13 pan. Make it ahead of time, slice it into squares, and top with whipped cream and a cherry.
Recipe: The Gold Lining Girl
Brownie Batter Ice Cream Bars
Who says that you have to actually bake brownies in order to enjoy them? If it’s too hot to turn on the oven, just make a cookie dough-like concoction from a box of brownie mix. Roll it out thinly with a rolling pin and freeze it. Then you can spread ice cream between two layers for ultimate chocolate goodness.
Recipe: Delish
Chocolate Grasshopper Ice Cream Tart
Retro-inspired grasshopper desserts are making a comeback, and this one is elegant enough for a dinner party. Start with an Oreo cookie crust, then mix some of those cookies into mint chip ice cream for the filling. Before serving, it gets a thick coating of chocolate ganache for a fudge-like topping.
Recipe: Epicurious
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