Looking for a picnic dessert recipe?

a bowl of strawberries

Picnic desserts
or picnic puddings?

When choosing a picnic dessert recipe, try and avoid anything that will squash or fall apart on the journey. Chocolate and creamy desserts are often dangerous too, because they will spoil in the heat unless you can ensure they are kept cool.


A jelly or fruit salad is always a good choice and this picnic dessert recipe can be made a little more exciting with exotic or unusual fruits mixed with fresh orange juice or sugar syrup, perhaps flavoured with a fruit liqueur, a vanilla pod, a puree of raspberries, or the pulp of some passion fruit.

In England strawberries and cream are always popular and, I must admit, there’s nothing better if the strawberries are home-grown and full of flavour. Keep the cream cool and hand it around, whipped if you like, with a sugar dredger. You might also like to use vanilla sugar. (to make quick vanilla sugar, blend a whole vanilla pod with a pound of sugar in the food processor)

You’ll find that fresh pineapple is beautifully refreshing after a picnic. Try it with a splash of orange flavoured liqueur, such as Cointreau, or sprinkled with mint sugar (blend a bunch of fresh mint with a cupful of sugar).

Here are a few more ideas for picnic dessert recipes and I’d love to hear about your ideas too.

non-melt chocolate cookies
honeyed grapes
coffee and walnut tray bake
flapjacks
gingerbread (cake)
pumpkin pie
no bake cheesecake recipe
Lucy's mum's macaroons
Ice-cream pie

I've always thought ice-cream would be difficult to serve at a picnic - although not impossible as you can buy some great coolers these days. However, my US visitors are showing me how to do it and it's obviously very popular in the USA, as the above recipe, submitted by some American youngsters, proves!

If you're keen to have this popular dessert at your picnic, then I recommend you check out a favourite (sorry "favorite"!) US website of mine - serving-ice-cream.com - and learn how you can have fun actually making it yourself, right at your picnic site!

This is a new idea for me and I'm sure it would work particularly well at a childrens' picnic party. If you give it a go, be sure to let me know how successful - and yummy! - it was.

Many Europeans prefer to finish a picnic meal with a piece of cheese and some fruit rather than with something very sweet.

Cheeses that do not sweat or become too runny are best on a hot day. Keep each one wrapped separately and carry them in your cool-box. However, take them out a good half hour before serving (depending on the weather) so that their full flavour can be appreciated.

Lay them out on a flat platter or basket and serve with apples, pears, grapes, fresh figs or sticks of crisp celery.

If you choose to have no picnic dessert but would like a little something sweet with your coffee after the meal, why not make and take along some homemade fudge to nibble at. Mind all those calories though!

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