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In today's special show, I'm gonna be sharing with you three of my favorite no-bake summer desserts that are guaranteed to impress, and best of all, you don't even need to turn on the oven. I'm gonna show you how you can make an incredible decade and five ingredient chocolate pie, a peach melba frozen yogurt that you do not need an ice cream machine for, and an amazing summer berry tiramisu that you can make in no time. Plus, you will get valuable tips on creating and serving these sweet sensations which will make your summer baking an absolute breeze.
We are gonna kick off this summer spectacular with my recipe for a five ingredient no-bake chocolate pie. It is a luxurious chocolate pie with a cookie crust and loads of whipped cream on top. It is going to be a fan favorite for sure. Okay, so let's get started with our no-bake chocolate pie. I'm excited about this. It's one of my favorite desserts. So the first thing we're going to do is I'm gonna teach you a little chef's trick. So here's what you do if you want to get your pie crust out of your pie dish.
What I do is I grease it and I line it with cling wrap before we make our pie. So when your pie is chilled and finished, it pulls right out of there and you can make it look beautiful on a lovely serving platter rather than trying to dig it out of your pan. So remember that for the future. Now for our cookies, I'm gonna go with a classic Oreo. So we have a double hit of chocolate with our pie. If you want to use graham crackers, biscuit cookies with that little bit of ginger and spice in there, that is toasted up to you. Anything will be absolutely delicious. Now what you want to do is just grind up your cookies beforehand.
We take out the filling and you can grind them up in a food processor or you can do like what I did when I was a kid in Ireland and my mom would put them in a plastic bag, get a rolling pin on the ground and we would bash the cookies until they were very fine crumbs. So you can choose either of those options. So I have them in a nice bowl here and into this I'm going to add in some melted butter. And all we're going for here is just to mix this up until we get the texture of like, you know, kind of a wet sand. You know for me when it comes to my pies and my cheesecakes, as much as I love the filling, I definitely like to bulk up that crust a little bit so I like to make it nice and thick so you've got a good amount of filling to contrast the base.
Quick mix, there you go. This is the texture that we're looking for. Like I said, wet sand. All we have to do is just pop this into our pie dish and this is where we get our hands dirty. Go in with your fingers and just press it in the base of your pan and up the sides. Try and get an even thickness all the way around. So often when we think of baking we think of the holidays, we think of celebrations, thinking of the wintertime where we're making nice warm cozy desserts. But bigger bolder baking is actually at its busiest during the summertime. We just get inundated with requests for like frozen no-bake desserts. So some of my most popular recipes, no churn, ice cream, the frozen
yogurt that I'm going to show you that doesn't need a special machine, all of these things are hugely popular around this time. So these are great options for when you're having celebrations, having family over, and you want to keep everything a little bit cooler. Okay there you go, there is our no fuss cookie crust. I'm going to pop this into the fridge, let it firm up while we make our lovely chocolate filling. So now because this is a no-bake pie, we have a no-bake filling. So we are going to make this lovely filling that's actually a whipped ganache. So ganache is just a few simple ingredients, chocolate and cream, and we're going to add in a little bit of vanilla. So for this filling I'm going to use bittersweet chocolate.
Now the beauty of bittersweet chocolate is that there's very little sugar and bittersweet around 70% cocoa solids for this really like luscious pie. We want something that's high cocoa solids, you get more chocolate and less sugar. So you get a really lovely richness. Also you get a bit of like that bittersweet, we're going to have cream, we have our cookie base, everything like that. So we're going to have a nice balance between sweet, rich, and bitter. So it's going to be really lovely when we eat it all at the very end. So the cream that we're using is a heavy whipping cream, something around 36% fat content.
Follow me over to the stovetop and we're going to get this heating. So here I have a little saucepan, I'm going to turn that on to medium-low heat. And all we want to do here is just warm our cream through. We're just going to let this come to a simmer, we do not want to let it boil. So I've been very fortunate over my long career as a pastry chef to work in many kitchens around the world. And there's one thing that I've definitely learned, simpler is better. You know, I worked in fine dining, I worked in Mission Star restaurants. And when it comes to it at the end of the day, my millions of fans around the world, they just wanted like amazing food, but still simple techniques, simple ingredients.
And that's really what I specialize in, simple recipes with over the top results. Okay, lovely. This is what we're looking for. If you look in there, the cream has formed a bit of a skin, slightly bubbling underneath the surface. I'm going to turn that off. And then I want you to follow me over to the countertop. So our chocolate is ready to go. Pour that straight over. Look at that, gorgeous. So here's what we're going to do. Chocolate doesn't like to be mixed too much, it can get a little bit oily and separate. So what we like to do with the ganache is let it sit here for around 10 minutes.
Let the heat of the cream melt that chocolate all by itself. Then we're going to come back, give it a little bit of a whisk. So after a few minutes, you'll notice that the cream has melted all of that lovely chocolate. And what you end up with is a beautiful silky soft ganache, just like that. That's pure heaven in a bowl. Now our final little touch here is a little bit of vanilla extract. Now chocolate and vanilla are best friends. And when you use vanilla in baking, I always think of it as a seasoning, a little bit like salt.
It just enhances the other flavor of the ingredients. So it's really important. Vanilla extract is such an important ingredient to have in your pantry. And I actually have a recipe on my website of how you can make your own vanilla extract at home, which it can be really cost effective. And so good. That is beautiful. Now as much as I want to dip my finger in there, I'm going to let this sit here for around five minutes or so. Let it cool down a little bit. Then we're going to whip it up and get it nice and thick. Once your ganache is cooled down, we're going to do our last step, which is actually whipping it up.
Now I'm going to use my hand mixer. You can also do this by hand if you want with just a regular old whisk. What we're going to do is just whip it up a little bit. And what this does, it incorporates air and it makes it lovely and light. So what we're going to end up with is this beautiful whipped light, almost like a moose like filling. [mixer whirring] And it just lightens up that chocolate a little bit. Fantastic. Do you see how that doubled in volume because we incorporated all of that air? I have my cookie crust here ready to go, and then we're just going to scoop in our filling.
Seriously. I mean, what's not to love about that? Beautiful, rich, bittersweet chocolate filling. And we're not even finished yet. There's more to come. Okay, lovely. Here we are, ready to go into the fridge. Now all we want to do is let this set for roughly around four hours. The beauty of this pie is that you can make it up to two days in advance and keep it in the fridge. So you have it ready to go for your gathering.
So here we have our set pie. Now remember this base that we did earlier? Check this out. Give it a bit of a shimmy. It'll pop right out of there. Peel away our cling wrap. If there's something I've learned after my years of being a pastry chef doing things the right way, doing things not always the right way, is tips and tricks I am full of. And this is one of my favorite tricks, to have a beautiful looking pie at the end. Look at that when you put it on your serving platter. So now to garnish this pie, we're keeping it simple.
Here I have a big bowl of whipped cream. Now so many people ask me, "What's your recipe for whipped cream?" And I'll let you in on a little secret. It's cream. That's all it is. I don't put sugar in it. I don't put vanilla in it. I keep it simple. I'll tell you why. Because we have sugar and vanilla and chocolate and lovely flavors in the base of our pie. We want this to kind of contrast these flavors and really complement them. So what I'm gonna do is just like that. Pile it up high.
Look at this. Gorgeous. Now our finishing touch, I have a bar of bittersweet chocolate here and I have a vegetable peeler. And I'm just going to grate it on top. I am delighted with how this turns out. It looks fantastic. Just a few ingredients. It was no bake. We never turned on the oven. This is going to be a fan favorite. This summertime for sure. No matter the occasion, no one is going to turn down this lovely homemade chocolate pie. If you're traveling with this dessert this summertime, feel free to whip the cream and serve it on the side.
Chocolate tastes its best when it's at room temperature. So if you let this pie sit out for a little bit on the countertop, it'll taste that much better. There's no big chocolate pie as a showstopper, but I can't wait any longer to give it a try. Chocolate ganache in the middle, bittersweet chocolate, the softly whipped cream on top, and that lovely sweet chocolate cookie base. You are going to want to make this and right now you have access to this recipe and many more in my free summer dessert guide.
Scan that QR code or head to the URL below to unlock these recipes. And before you know it, you're going to be a bold baker just like me. That pie we just made is definitely for the chocolate lovers. But right now we're going to cool things down a little bit and I'm going to show you how you can make a peach melba frozen yogurt. It's going to be a layer of peaches and raspberries all mixed together. And best of all, it is no churn, no ice cream machine needed. So what is the secret behind making frozen yogurt at home without an ice cream machine? Here it is, frozen fruit. When you use frozen fruit as your base for frozen yogurt, what it does is when it blends up, it gets lovely and thick, it doesn't get watery.
It incorporates air and then it makes it really good for freezing. So no matter what fruit you're using, make sure it's frozen and then add that in to your food processor. We are making peach melba, which is raspberry and peaches, two flavors that are best friends. So we're going to start out with our peach layer here. Next we're going to add in our yogurt. Now you can use any yogurt you like. You can use Greek, you can use plain, you can use non-dairy, whatever works for you. So our next ingredient in our frozen yogurt is some honey.
Now this brings out a little bit of the sweetness in the fruit, yes, but it also makes your frozen yogurt scoopable. So this is a really important ingredient. And also it's a natural sugar. So as you can see here, all great ingredients are going into our frozen yogurt. And then last but not least, we're going to add in a little splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Now what this does, it just kind of balances the flavor in our frozen yogurt and it kind of just makes everything kind of sing together. So we're going to add that in. And then we have our lid on there.
Now all you want to do is just pulse this up until it gets nice and smooth and everything is blended well together. Okay, lovely. Now let me give you a little tip. During the summertime, fruit is at its most plentiful, it's at its cheapest, and that's at its best. So what I like to do is I buy all my fruit, my berries, everything when they're in season. And then what I do is I lay them out flat, I freeze them, and then I have frozen fruit to use for months on end. Only at its most best. So this is the first step, pop your peach layer into a bowl, then we're going to put it into the freezer while we make our
second raspberry layer. So here are our frozen raspberries, I have to say frozen raspberries are one of my most favorite things in the world. Just like before, we're going to add in our yogurt, our delicious runny honey, and our splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Then on with our lid and blend up like before. So the recipe that I'm showing you for the frozen yogurt can be actually customized to any of your favorite fruit, strawberry, melon, whatever you like. You can use that amount of frozen fruit, a little bit of yogurt, honey, lemon juice, and you will have for yourself your very own frozen yogurt.
There we go, that's it. Lovely and smooth, look at the color of that, so vibrant and it actually smells delicious. So I'm going to grab our peaches, grab our ice cream tubs, and we can get it into the freezer. So now here is the really fun part of this recipe. We are going to add one of the layers into the other, and create this kind of ripple effect. So you get the best of both worlds, you get a little bit of peach, a little bit of raspberry in every single bite, and the color and the contrast just looks amazing. Peaches are a little bit creamy, the raspberries are kind of sharp and have this beautiful vibrant pink. Now I'm just going to take a spoon and very carefully, not too many times, just give a few stirs together and you see how you get that
lovely ripple effect, just like that, almost like tie dye. Once it's stirred, go ahead and put it straight into your freezable container. So I came up with these no churn recipes because I was hearing from a lot of fans that they don't have ice cream machines, and I didn't have an ice cream machine either, but I still wanted to make frozen yogurt, sorbet, ice cream at home, but this is a really easy way to do it. Okay, on with our lid. Now all you want to do is pop this into the freezer for a few hours until it's frozen, preferably overnight, and then it's ready to scoop.
Okay, once it is frozen, it is ready to be scooped and that is perfect timing for a frozen yogurt party. You can get really fun with this recipe, especially if there's kids around. You can dress it up, you can make it a whole big event. You can also try some of my other flavors of frozen yogurt, like cookies and cream and blueberry cheesecake. This is so satisfying, it's refreshing, it's cooling. Peach Melba is a classic 70s flavor, but you know what? It still works really good today.
The flavors complement each other, the colors are gorgeous, and it is just so perfect for a hot day here in Southern California. So right now to get this recipe, you can scan the QR code or visit the URL on your screen. Also as a bonus, I'm giving you the recipe for the blueberry cheesecake frozen yogurt and the cookies and cream frozen yogurt. That frozen yogurt is guaranteed to cool you down on a hot summer day. We're going to switch gears a little bit now, and I'm going to share with you my personal favorite summer dessert, which is a berry tiramisu.
This dessert screams summertime loaded with seasonal berries, ladyfingers, and layers of mascarpone. Just watch as your guests keep on coming back for more. So for this recipe, we're starting out on the stovetop because we're going to make a quick simple syrup to infuse our berries. So here I have a saucepan, into this I'm going to add in some water, and a little bit of sugar. Now on a medium low heat, all we want to do is to let that sugar dissolve. So what I mentioned was that this tiramisu is a twist on the traditional.
Traditional has coffee, ladyfingers, mascarpone. We have mascarpone, ladyfingers, but we don't have any coffee in ours. We're going to replace that with summer berries in season, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, all my favorite berries this time of year. And it's going to make it really delicious and family friendly. So I came up with this recipe because I love tiramisu, but I also love traditional trifle that I grew up with in Ireland. So I put this recipe in my new cookbook, Bigger Bolder Baking, every day. And I put it in the family favorite chapter because this is just a fantastic recipe for the whole family.
Midweek, anytime, especially in the summertime when these berries are just bursting with goodness. Okay, so our sugar has dissolved. It only takes a minute. I'm going to turn off that heat and we're going to add in our berries. Now for this recipe, I recommend using fresh berries, not frozen. Frozen have extra liquid in them. We don't need that extra liquid. So we're going to add in some quartered fresh strawberries, some lovely blueberries, and fresh raspberries.
Now I'm going to give that just a very gentle mix all together, just to coat the berries. Set those berries over to the side and we're going to let them infuse in that sugar sear for around 10 minutes or so. The fruit is going to soften. It's also going to give lovely flavor to that liquid. Then in a few minutes, we're going to strain it off over on our countertop. So our berries have softened here. I have a bowl lined with a sieve. I'm going to pour, oh my gosh, the smell of this. I just got a waft of it there. We are saving all of that beautiful liquid. And then we're going to pop our berries to cool down in a separate bowl.
Now like I said, this is a family-friendly recipe. However, if you want to booze it up a little bit, you can add in a little bit of creme de casisse or chambord, which I have here, to your liquid. And that will just kick up that flavor a notch. Now here's what we're going to do. We're going to set these over to the side, let them cool down, and we're going to start making our mascarpone layer. So now for our mascarpone cream layer, I have a nice big bowl here. And here I have some heavy whipping cream. Look at that. We want cream with a high fat content, around 36%, so it whips up really well. Into this, we're going to add in a little bit of sugar for sweetness. And then a little bit of vanilla extract. So for this, I'm going to use
my electric hand mixer again, and I'm going to whip this up until around soft peaks. It just takes two minutes. So lovely, that's nice, soft, billowy peaks. Now next is our mascarpone. So I like to have it out at room temperatures. You see how it gets nice and soft, and it just blends into our other ingredients so much better. So we're going to add that in there. Now in with our beater again, I'm just going to whip this up until it gets kind of just stiff peaks, gets nice and thick. And there we have it.
What a thing of beauty, a big old bowl of mascarpone cream, vanilla, and sugar. Yummy, yummy, yummy. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to get the other elements for our tiramisu, and we can start to assemble this lovely dessert. Okay, so we have everything ready to go for our tiramisu. We've got our berries, we've got our juice, we've got our mascarpone, here I have some lovely ladyfingers. So here's what we're going to do, this is really simple. We're going to do two layers and we're going to repeat them. All we do is dip our ladyfinger, one, two, three, into our liquid, and just line an eight by eight dish, or whatever dish you're using.
Quick dip, the ladyfingers soak up really fast, and we just lay them on the bottom of the dish. Okay, so those are our ladyfingers. Now I'm going to take our berry mixture and I'm going to scatter half of it over our ladyfingers. And now we're going to go with our mascarpone layer and half of that mixture. Look at that, look how soft and luxurious that is. And then just repeat with your same layers all over again. So we're going to dip our ladyfingers, the rest of our remaining fruit, and the last of our mascarpone filling.
Smooth out your cream filling on top to get a nice even layer and cover up all that fruit. And there you have it, as much as I want to dig in right now, it's really best if you pop this into the fridge, let it get nice and cold for roughly two to four hours. What happens is the texture just gets a lot better, the whole dessert gets softer, and the flavor just improves a lot more. So let's pop it into the fridge and then we'll be ready to go. When you're ready to serve your tiramisu, what I like to do is garnish it with a few toasted slivered almonds on top. And then of course, just to show exactly what's on the inside, we do some nice fresh berries. And just because I'm old school, I like to also do a dusting of powdered sugar.
And that's all it takes, this beautiful summer no-bake tiramisu is ready to be served. This dessert is a particularly special one, so I like to go all out when I'm serving it and lay down linen and some lovely vintage plates. Everyone's gonna love this dessert, so for large gatherings you can easily double this recipe. With the fresh cream and berries, this dessert is best eaten the day it is made, but don't worry, I guarantee you it'll be all gone. This is the one I've been waiting all day to try, so I'm very happy to end my day with this. I'm all about texture when it comes to my dessert. You have this lovely creamy mascarpone filling, and then you have the soft ladyfingers in there, and then those
berries that still have a little pop to them. This is summertime on a plate, everyone's gonna love it. So there you have it, in today's show we learned how to make a decadent five ingredient no-bake chocolate pie, a fruity frozen yogurt that you can make at home, and a twist on a traditional tiramisu, perfect for the summertime. And I also shared some tips for easy entertaining this summertime so you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time outside in the
