4 Easy and Healthy Summertime Desserts

4 Easy and Healthy Summertime Desserts

Sweeten your summer evenings with desserts that are perfect “on the Beach.” It’s really very simple to prepare a nutritious and delicious summery dessert with just a few ingredients. Here are 4 taste-tempting ideas:

Create a chilled yogurt parfait. 

Creamy nonfat (0%) Greek yogurt makes a healthy substitute for ice cream in a parfait. Layer the yogurt with a quarter-cup of nuts of your choice. You can add a little vanilla, lemon, or almond extract, or another extract of your choice to the yogurt for flavor, sprinkle the parfait with lime or lemon zest, or drizzle it with sugar-free chocolate syrup, if desired. You could also layer the Greek yogurt with fresh summer fruit, such as strawberries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines, or a combination.


Grill fruit kebabs.

Try grilling fruit. This caramelizes its natural sugars and enhances its flavor. You can halve nectarines, apricots, plums, mangoes, and peaches and grill, or cut the fruit into chunks and place them on either metal or wooden skewers (if you use wooden ones, soak them in water first for about 15 minutes). You can even grill strawberries, but keep in mind that softer fruits like strawberries and apricots will grill faster than firmer ones, like peaches and nectarines. Sprinkle the fruit with ground cinnamon, cardamom, or star anise, before grilling, or with chopped mint or lemon or lime zest after. You can also melt dark chocolate to use for dipping the grilled fruit.

Add lemon or lime to a ricotta crème.

Fresh lemon or lime juice and zest make great additions to many summer desserts. Try adding lemon or lime zest to a classic vanilla flavored ricotta creme.


Prepare a frozen dessert.

Fresh fruit provides the base for a variety of frozen desserts that are super-refreshing on a warm summer evening. Use whatever fruit you prefer. This will please adults and kids alike.