These Desserts Are Berry, Berry Good

Berries are in abundance this time of year, and luckily they lend themselves to making some pretty delicious desserts. Take advantage of berry season with a few of these berry sweet recipes this summer!

Blackberry Hand Pies

Sweet, tangy berries are perfectly complemented by buttery, flaky pie crust, and it’s even better in a handheld size! This recipe calls for using pre-made pie dough from the grocery, but you can add an extra layer of richness and challenge by making your own pie crust. Alison Roman’s pie crust recipe is easy, nearly fool-proof, and perfect for hand pies!

Raspberry Custard Pie

Berry pies are often pretty fragile since berries are small and don’t have much structure once they are cooked, but this pie solves that problem by binding the raspberries in a creamy custard. You’ll make a homemade vanilla custard – which is actually very easy to do – and mix the raspberries into that. The custard will be thick enough that the raspberries will stay in place and you’ll have a wonderfully stable dessert!

Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake

What’s better than pound cake? A sweet, summery pound cake enhanced with fresh lemon and blueberries! Lemon and blueberries are such a classic summer dessert pair, and their inherent tartness offsets the rich sweetness of the pound cake. If you’ve ever had issues with blueberries sinking to the bottom of a cake before, you can rest assured that you won’t see that issue with this cake. Not only do the berries get coated in flour to help suspend them in the batter, but the pound cake batter is also very thick – thick enough to keep the berries firmly in place as the cake bakes.

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Mixed Berry Strudel with Vanilla Sauce

Who says that you can’t have breakfast for dessert or dessert for breakfast? This mixed berry strudel with vanilla sauce blurs the line between the last meal of the day and the first, and it’s so good you may just want to eat it for both! If you’ve never worked with puff pastry before, sticking with the recipe and using a box from the grocery store will be the easiest route since you’ll be slicing the pastry at even intervals to make that classic strudel shape. If you’re a pastry pro – or just looking for extra brownie points – try making your own!