Ina Garten's 4-Ingredient Summery Dessert Is Too Easy Not To Make

Ina Garten may be a multimillionaire with a home in the Hamptons and another on Park Avenue, but she still puts on her stockings one leg at a time. Yet another trait she seems to share with the rest of us is a disinclination to heat up the kitchen to any great extent when summer temperatures are rising — at least, this is what we can surmise from the number of no-cook summer recipes she shares on her website. Among these is a super-easy dessert that only requires a few minutes in front of a hot stove: a medley of frozen berries with a hot white chocolate sauce.

Garten, a celebrity chef known for only using the finest ingredients, starts by using fresh berries that she freezes herself, although there's no reason you couldn't start with pre-frozen produce as a more economical alternative. She opts for equal parts of raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, slicing the strawberries thickly while leaving the other two berries as-is. She then makes a sauce out of heavy cream, vanilla extract, and "good" white chocolate (she's not a fan of white chocolate chips, so prefers chopping bar chocolate). The sauce is poured over berries that have been allowed to defrost for about 10 or 15 minutes. She likes to use dessert plates for an elegant presentation, but those of us with a more heavy-handed pour or a penchant for slopping might prefer bowls for better mess prevention.

Simple as the recipe is, it's open to customization. You can replace the white chocolate with a bittersweet variety for a nice contrast to the sweetness of the fruit. If you're a fan of almond flavor, you could add a little almond extract with the vanilla. You could also add pound cake or brownies, and you could create a fruity hot fudge sundae with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Another Ina Garten-approved alternative for an oven-free dessert is her take on a vintage icebox cake. Garten's no-bake chocolate cake is made with store-bought chocolate chip cookies layered with whipped cream and mascarpone flavored with cocoa powder, espresso, and Kahlua. Another nearly no-cook recipe she's shared on her blog is for summer pudding, a British dish typically made from leftover bread (she uses brioche) layered with stewed, sweetened berries.

Garten has plenty of other warm-weather dessert recipes that won't even require you to turn on the stove. Among these are two types of the easy-to-make frozen treat known as granita (her recipes are for grapefruit and coffee flavors), as well as a simple three-ingredient sherbet consisting of nothing more than peaches, sugar, and gelatin. She's also tried her hand at Eton Mess, another British dessert. Hers is pretty standard, made of sweetened berries, whipped cream, and meringues, although she uses store-bought meringues (hence the no-cook aspect). She also boozes it up with framboise liqueur, as she does with her summer pudding.