Food & Cooking Recipes Ingredients Fruit 5 Peach Desserts That Prove It’s the Best Fruit of Summer Sarah Carey shares her all-time favorites. By Sarah Carey Sarah Carey Sarah is the food content director for Martha Stewart Brand and a freelance food editor, recipe developer, and food stylist working in NYC. Previously she was the food director for Martha Stewart Living magazine, and the editor-in-chief of Everyday Food. You can see her thousands of fun and informative cooking videos on the Everyday Food YouTube channel. Editorial Guidelines Published on July 1, 2024 Close Photo: Marcus Nilsson Sometimes I say strawberries or cherries are my favorite fruit—I love rhubarb, too, but technically it’s a vegetable—but truly, I’m all about peaches. I’m never happier than when I’m wandering the aisles of a farmers market or pulling up at a farmstand to purchase a box of fresh summer peaches. Once I get home, I line the peaches up on baking sheets to finish ripening and start planning which desserts I want to make. Then I get baking. It's Stone Fruit Season: Here's How to Enjoy Peaches, Plums, and More This Summer Tips for Buying and Using Peaches Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about buying and using peaches. Here are my top tips: I always carry a few hard-sided containers to hold soft fruit so they don’t get crushed by the cache of cabbage, zucchini, and melons in my tote bags. (I use containers to protect tomatoes and berries, too.) I like to buy peaches a day or two day before I am going to use them, then let them sit on the counter to finish ripening. If you buy peaches that are already soft, you’ll probably end up with bruised, unusable fruit at home. Choose peaches that have no green at the stem end and smell amazing—if they don't, they will never taste amazing. When they are ready to use, they should yield slightly when gently pressed but shouldn’t be soft or mushy. Store your peaches at room temperature until they are ripe. After that, you can refrigerate them. The best peaches for desserts are not necessarily the ones you want to eat. I consider donut peaches, for example, more for eating than baking. I like the more floral white peaches for desserts that utilize delicate cooking techinques like poaching, or I use them raw. They often have a gorgeous purple tint on the outside. But those more common yellow or red-tinged peaches are my go-to for desserts. Nectarines are just as good as peaches—if not better for those who don’t like peach fuzz. You can use them in any of these recipes if you prefer. Clingstone vs. Freestone Peaches: Freestone peaches are much easier to work with than clingstone peaches. As their names suggest, freestone peaches give up their pits easily, whereas clingstone peaches hold onto them. Most supermarket peaches are clingstone, but if you happen to see peaches labeled freestone at the grocery store or a farmstand—buy them! My 5 Favorite Peach Desserts You can be sure I’ll be making these recipes all throughout peach season. 01 of 05 Peach Crumble Grant Webster While I love making crumble with all kinds of fruit, peach crumble is in a league of its own. There’s a touch of salt from the topping, and the butterscotch flavor of the brown sugar is classic with the sweet, bright, floral acidity of the peaches. My unique method calls for squeezing some of the topping in clumps over the fruit to create a nice textural contrast. (I often double the topping and freeze the other half so I can make another crumble later.) View Recipe Peach crumble is such an easy dessert that you can double, even triple, to feed a bigger crowd. If sizing up, don’t go deeper, go wider. Scale up to a 9-by-13-inch baking dish and bake it a bit longer; check after another 10 minutes added to the original bake time. 02 of 05 Peach Lattice Pie Christopher Testani You may think I say this about many of my recipes, but this peach lattice pie truly is one of my all-time favorites. I don't often peel peaches (I like the color the skin adds, and I can't be bothered), but a few years back, I saw a pie that Zoë Francois had made. She peeled the peaches and used the macerating method I adapted for this recipe. Sugar is mixed with peeled and blanched peaches to pull out the juices, which are then thickened and folded back into the fruit. This helps keep your uncooked crust from getting soggy. The crust for this pie is extra flaky due to the addition of a bit of shortening along with the butter. It’s very out of style to use shortening in a pie crust, but I adore the old-fashioned texture it provides. I hope you love this recipe as much as I do. View Recipe 03 of 05 Peach Blueberry Cobbler Years ago, I developed recipes for a story about cobblers, crumbles, and crisps in Martha Stewart Living. It turned out to be one of the top stories we ever published. I can’t say with absolute certainty why, but I would venture that the simplicity, along with the nostalgia, appealed to readers. It’s appealing to me, too, which is why I make a cobbler or a crisp every time I need to bring a dessert to a summer potluck or party. Like most fruit desserts, this one is highly adaptable, and you can use whatever fruit you prefer. Just remember, if the fruit is very tart (like apricots), you’ll need to increase the sugar—or if it’s very juicy (like sour cherries), add a bit more thickener. And if you’ve never combined peaches and blueberries before, you’re really in for a treat. View Recipe 04 of 05 Peach Pavlova Paola + Murray This recipe is a little different; it features peaches cooked on the stovetop rather than baked in the oven. It’s another recipe that calls for peeling the peaches—and it’s well worth the effort. Poaching is a lovely, gentle cooking method, and this recipe infuses the fruit with a little lemon and vanilla. You’ll love the absolute elegance of the poached peaches sitting atop a fluffy pile of softly whipped cream and cradled by a crunchy, but also soft, meringue. And be sure to save the delicious poaching liquid to sweeten your iced tea or lemonade, or to drizzle into your favorite summer spritz. I love it added to an Aperol spritz, or Martha’s favorite San Germain spritz, topped off with seltzer or sparkling wine. View Recipe Meringue is all about egg whites, but save the yolks. You can freeze them until you’re ready to use them. Try making a crème anglaise to serve with the pavlova. Or freeze that crème anglaise in an ice cream maker to make ice cream. One of my favorite ways to use the yolks is in lemon curd. 05 of 05 Peach Sherbert Marcus Nilsson I saved the easiest for last. It’s not a baked dessert, but this two-ingredient peach sherbet is the easiest frozen dessert—no ice cream maker required—and so good to make on those days when you don’t want to turn on the oven. All you need to do is blend frozen peaches (you can use store-bought frozen peach slices or peel, slice, and freeze ripe fresh peaches) with sweetened condensed milk. That’s it! Enjoy the sherbet right away, or freeze it in a loaf pan until you need it. Just remember to take it out of the freezer 10 minutes before you want to serve it to let it soften to the best texture. 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