Looking for a simple dessert? It doesn’t get easier than fruit compote over vanilla ice cream. Compote is fresh, saucy and sweet, and ready in as little as 15 minutes.

You can make compote ahead of time and warm it up or throw it onto the stove after dinner. Serve it on ice cream for dessert, yogurt or toast the next morning, or anything else that could use some fruity flavor. You really can’t go wrong.

What is compote, exactly? Compote is a simple fruit sauce made with pieces of fresh (or frozen) fruit and some sugar, cooked briefly on the stove. You could call the end result a textured fruit sauce or chunky fruit syrup. I call it magic.

Instead of sugar, I use a small amount of maple syrup or honey to make naturally sweetened compote. Since it’s liquid, you can easily add more to taste after cooking if your compote isn’t quite sweet enough.

Compote is not as thick as jam or jelly, and it’s meant to be consumed relatively soon after making (it will keep for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator). It’s not designed to be canned or preserved for the months or years ahead. Compote is so easy to make that you can throw together a batch at a moment’s notice!

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Last Friday, I stepped off the plane from Montana into Kansas City summer. Ninety degrees and sunny. I ditched my jacket and daydreamed about all the summery outfits I’d rather be wearing while I waited for the bus to take me back to my car. Acclimating to skin-prickling heat is never a pleasant process, but I am so ready for non-stop sunshine and long afternoons by the pool.

I’m also ready for some frozen treats! I’ve had mango on the brain lately (remember those mango spring rolls and that mango salsa?), so when the idea to make a frozen version of a mango lassi popped into my head the other day, I got right to work. Mango lassis are super refreshing blended mango and yogurt drinks. I always make room for one when I visit an Indian buffet.

This frozen yogurt version is just as refreshing as the traditional version, if not more so. It’s smooth, creamy and scoopable right from the freezer, thanks to honey’s mysterious anti-freezing properties (can someone explain the chemistry behind that?). Fresh mangos can be a little pricy and difficult to work with, so I recommend using frozen mango so you can save money and skip the slicing steps!

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This homemade peanut butter ice cream is such a treat! The recipe yields ultra-creamy peanut butter ice cream with irresistible honey notes. I love peanut butter and honey on toast, and it’s even better in ice cream. It’s a match made in heaven.

This ice cream recipe is a little unconventional, but hear me out. I love making my ice cream with coconut milk simply because it’s easier to make than custard-based ice creams. It tastes just as good to me!

With coconut milk ice creams, you don’t have to fuss with eggs. To summarize, this recipe is dairy free, so it’s suitable for lactose-intolerant ice cream lovers, and it’s egg free, too.

The recipe is entirely sweetened with honey. Honey is the perfect sweetener for coconut milk-based ice creams. Since it never fully freezes, the ice cream stays soft enough to scoop straight from the freezer. So, it offers a more traditional ice cream texture on first bite. Now you know!

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Will my fellow perfectionists please raise their hands? I know I’m not the only one who chases perfection and suffers for it. In its more mild form, perfectionism can be a good thing, a steady drive to improve. I’ve taken it to the extreme lately, though, into never-good-enough territory. At this point, I am my own harshest critic and my own worst enemy. Whenever a surefire recipe concept fails me, or I don’t like what I see in the mirror, or the crumbs and splatters take over my kitchen countertop, my disappointment spirals downward until I hit rock-bottom defeat.

Eventually, I drag myself up and put on Cookie’s leash so we can walk it off. Those brisk walks bring perspective. I remind myself that perfection is entirely subjective. Not to mention, impossible. Nothing will ever be perfect. So why am I bothering with such an impossible pursuit? My drive to be the best only succeeds in making me feel worthless, jealous, even bitter. That’s not me! To that end, I’ve hired a professional to help me. I want to learn how to accept less-than-perfect with grace rather than defeat.

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This chai tea affogato is such a fun dessert to share with your loved ones. The concept came to me a few weeks ago while answering emails at a local coffee shop. I ordered a chai tea latte and quickly thereafter requested an affogato (because how often do you see affogatos on coffee shop menus?).

Traditional Italian affogato is espresso poured over a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. I was thunderstruck by the combination of super strong, hot coffee poured over creamy, cold ice cream. It’s as delightful as a hot fudge sundae but not so decadent that it leaves you with a stomachache.

I went to the trouble of making my favorite honey-sweetened coconut milk ice cream for my affogatos. Buy your favorite vanilla ice cream for a shortcut. Dessert is ready!

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I’m an idea person. You know what I mean? I get really excited about new concepts and novel ways to combine things. It’s my nature. After I created this blog, I started to get bigger and better ideas about food. Through my camera lens, I saw ingredients broken down into colors and textures. Then the flavors seemed more abstract, and I learned that I could combine them like paint on an artist’s palette. Every new-to-me cooking technique is a revelation, every new kitchen gadget a new tool.

I say that I won the jackpot when this little side project of mine turned into a full-fledged food blog, because food blogging suits me so well. I love that my day job lets me work from home and spend more time on this blog. Most days, it’s just me, my dog and my ideas, and I’m happy. I literally get to taste my ideas—sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad—but they’re always satisfying. It’s all about the learning process.

I decided to write about this subject today because I was just complaining to my friend that writing these posts is the hardest part. You see, when I get excited about a recipe concept, it’s off to the races. I daydream about it, I research it, I make my grocery list, and then I go home and make it. Maybe it’s no good and it dies there. Maybe it has potential and evolves into something different, but better. Maybe I get lucky and it’s just right on the first try. I make it again while tweaking my notes and photographing the process, and then I edit the photos. All this time, I’m in the zone. I couldn’t tell you how much time I spend standing on a chair and leaning over the table with my camera like a crazy person, because I lose track of the minutes while I’m doing it.

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I can’t take credit for this one. It’s my friend Jordan’s creation. She has been sporting an adorable growing baby bump for the past eight months. She makes pregnancy look good… which is not to say that I want to be pregnant any time soon. Oh no, this is a spectator sport. Pass the wine, please. Lucky for us, Jordan got a craving for peaches and plums a few weeks ago and went a little overboard at the store. She sliced up the surplus and brought it over to my place on girls night.

After dessert, she tossed the stone fruit with sugar and balsamic vinegar and put it in the oven. We chatted around the table while the fruit transformed into sweet roasted perfection. It’s one of those desserts that features a dangerous combination of contrasting flavors—sweet summer fruit, tangy reduced balsamic vinegar and creamy vanilla ice cream. We kept going back for bite after bite, and when we were finished, Jordan reported that even the baby approved.

I’ve made this dessert a couple of times since girls night. I could have changed it up by adding toasted nuts or granola, or baked it with a crisp topping, but sometimes the best summer desserts are the simplest ones. Since this dessert is composed almost entirely of produce, the flavor depends mostly on the fruit itself. You could probably make this dessert ten times and it will never taste quite the same (but it will always taste good!).

If you find yourself with a surplus of stone fruit, or just need a fresh, easy dessert and don’t mind turning on the oven, this recipe is for you. It’s especially wonderful with a glass of chilled white wine.

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Here’s a chai ice cream recipe I’ve been tinkering with over the past month. I brought the latest batch over to girls’ night this week and the girls say it’s just right.

As a frozen treat with warming spices, it seems like an appropriate dessert for in-between weather (or cold weather, or hot weather—do we ever need an excuse to enjoy ice cream?).

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When I bought an ice cream maker, I envisioned an endless supply of homemade vanilla bean ice cream, on the ready for topping warm homemade desserts. My fairy tale became much more feasible this week when I discovered that I could adapt my fresh mint ice cream recipe into a light vanilla bean ice cream. Now that I know how to make it, I hope to have a pint in stock at all times. I’m in ice cream heaven!

This ice cream perfectly scoopable straight from the freezer, and whether savored on its own or topping an oven-warmed dessert, it’s a perfect scoop indeed. Lighter than most, it calls for 2% milk and half and half rather than whole milk and heavy cream. It’s more like an ice cream/gelato hybrid than an intensely creamy, heavy ice cream. Homemade ice cream recipes generally call for 5 to 6 eggs, but this one only requires 2, which makes it less expensive, too. That said, organic milk and eggs go a long way in making this ice cream so tasty. They’re worth it!

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This weekend, I was overwhelmed by the variety of gorgeous fresh produce at the farmers’ market. I couldn’t resist a basket of peaches, bright green cucumbers, and this beautiful 12 pound watermelon. I lugged it around in my arms like a big baby.

Watermelon, a classic summer treat, is delicious in juicy slices, but I took it to a whole new level with this frozen watermelon, mint and lime sorbet. The sorbet consists almost primarily of watermelon, with very little sugar added. A few tablespoons of rum improve the consistency of this frozen treat.

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