A quick and easy recipe for a delicious indulgent dessert. Perfect for hot summer days and easy to make kids and adult versions!

Serves 1

For the Sundae

• Peaches (tinned or fresh)
• Vanilla Ice-cream
• Crushed amaretti biscuits
• Whipped cream

This drink is for adults only, unless you take out the liqueur and add orange juice instead. Perfect for a hot day and may even make a nice lolly pop!

If you’re struggling to deal with a glut of courgettes this summer (they grow like blinkin’ wildfire), here’s a good way to use some up. It’s quite a rich cake and tastes great served with cream.

It works well as both a sandwich cake or a traybake (halve the ingredients if you want a small cake) and is a good way to getting two of your five a day – in cake form!

Serves 8

• 120g Butter
• 125ml Olive oil
• 100g Demerara sugar
• 200g Golden granulated sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 130ml Milk
• 350g Plain flour
• 2tsp Baking powder
• 4tbsp Bournville cocoa powder
• 400g Courgette, peeled and grated
• 1tsp Vanilla essence

For the icing and filling

• 200g Icing sugar
• 100g Bournville cocoa powder
• 3tbsp Creme fraiche
• Raspberries to decorate

Pre heat your oven to 190°C.

Mix together the butter, oil and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and beat the whole mixture together.

Mix in the milk and sift in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and mix together.

Finally, mix in the courgette and vanilla essence and bake  for 35-45 minutes.

While it’s all cooking, mix together the chocolate icing. You can use more or less creme fraiche depending on how runny or thick you prefer it. Slap it on when the cake has cooled properly and decorate with raspberries before the icing sets.

This cake is best eaten on the day or the day after it’s baked; for some reason the courgettes make it go a bit stodgy as it ages.

If you ask me, when Julie Andrews sang that brown paper packages tied up with string were one of her favourite things, she was only half way there. How about a brown paper package tied up with string and containing 600 grams of delicious brownies? They beat whiskers on kittens into a cocked hat, as I discovered when they found their way past the postman and through the letterbox last week.

Brownies by post are an absolute genius idea, courtesy of Chantal and her Yorkshire-based Love Brownies company. As easy as ordering a bunch of flowers, you just head on down to their website www.lovebrownies.co.uk and order up a box, personalize the greeting with a little note to say ‘happy birthday’ or whatever you like. For £15.95 (including p&p), bob’s your uncle, eight icing-sugar dusted plump pillows of chocolately goodness are on their way. They look, by the way, exactly like the pictures on their website (it’s not always the case so I thought I’d let you know!).

I do like being sent flowers, but I like these more. The eight brownies are big enough to fill your mouth (it took me four bites to eat one) and rich and dark enough to mean that you can’t scoff the lot in one sitting, even if you’re a greedy guts like me, so there will be some to share when your boyfriend comes home. The packaging is lovely (sorry that it looks a bit torn in the photo – I was a bit like a rabid dog as soon as I smelt that chocolatey smell) and it feels like a genuine decadent treat. And although it seems a bit expensive, when you consider that postage is included and that making really nice brownies at home with really good quality ingredients always costs more than you think, it’s not that bad at all. Next time I forget someone’s birthday, I’ll be straight online.

Watch out for their Love Mince Pies spin off, which will hit the internet around xmas time, and future delivery options of lemon cake, carrot cake and cheesecake. Delish!

Serves 4

• 1 part Pimms
• 3 parts flat lemonade
• a drop of mint flavouring (you don’t need much at all!)
• sliced strawberries
• apple
• cucumber

Mix Pimms, lemonade and mint together. Pour into ice lolly maker leaving a 1.5cm gap. Add all your bits of fruit, put in the freezer and leave to set for 4-5 hours. Enjoy!

A quick and easy recipe for pear and strawberry ice pops. Perfect for making in the Zoku Quick Pop!

Serves 6

• 6 pears
• 12 fresh or canned strawberries

Core and slice the pears. Chop the strawberries. Add to a liquidiser and liquidise until a puree consistency.

Pour into ice-lolly molds and place in the freezer until set.

This is a genuine Food For Friends recipe – inspired by the huge bag of cherries our friend Bev from down the road brought us, and a conversation Rachel and I had about how great Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia frozen yoghurt is – so great that I decided to come up with a version of it myself.

There’s one small problem – when it comes to defrost it, the cherry sauce melts a lot quicker than the yoghurt/cream/chocolate mix, so it’s a bit lumpy. Anyone got any ideas on how to sort that?

Serves 4

• 500g Cherries
• 300g Granulated sugar
• 300ml Creme fraiche
• 500g Total 2% yoghurt
• 2 tbsp Vanilla essence
• 100g Choc chips
• A cup of water
• You also need an ice cream maker – Magimix’s Le Glacier (RRP £39.99) is absolutely brill and has never let me down!

To make the cherry sauce

Hull the cherries and put them in a saucepan over a low heat with a cup of water (about 150ml I estimate) and the sugar. Bring to the boil and keep there for about an hour, stirring occasionally. Leave to cool overnight.

In the morning, pour the cherry sauce into a blender and blitz until smooth. If you like, you could retain half the sauce so you have a mainly smooth cherry sauce with occasional juicy bits.

To make the ice cream

Mix together the creme fraiche, yoghurt, vanilla essence and chocolate chips and put into an ice cream maker (or if you’re lazy, just mix it all in the ice cream maker). Churn it up until smooth and thick.

To put it all together: Put the ice cream into a tub and add the cherry sauce, mixing lightly so it looks like raspberry ripple. Finish by scattering a handful of chocolate chips on the top, if you haven’t already eaten them all by then! Freeze overnight.

This ice cream takes about an hour to defrost, but if you’re keen to try it, whack it in the microwave!

Fast and simple but fruitily fantastic! Using fresh fruit to make a cooling drink that is filling enough for a snack and also helps towards the important 5 a day! Dairy products can easily be replaced with non-dairy versions to make it suitable for people with lactose intolerance!

Serves 2

• ½ punnet of fresh strawberries
• 1 banana
• 1 pint semi-skimmed milk (or dairy free equivalent)
• 3 scoops vanilla ice cream (or dairy free equivalent)
• 2 drops vanilla essence or fresh seeds from fresh vanilla pod
• crushed ice-cubes

Place the strawberries and banana in a blender and blend until smooth. Add the milk, ice-cream and vanilla and blend again until combined. Place crushed ice in a tall glass and pour the smoothie mixture over.

Drink and enjoy!

Delicious served as a dessert or as a refreshing drink. Impress your friends with this exotic drink over a hot BBQ! Makes about 1-2 glasses.

Serves 2

• ½ a large papaya or 1 small papaya
• 250g plain yoghurt
• 1 orange, juiced and zested
• 1 lemon, juiced and zested
• a pinch of salt
• handful of mint leaves
• 100ml coconut milk with cream
• honey or maple syrup to taste

Cut the papaya into quarters and peel off the skin. Remove the pips and then cut into chunks.

Put everything (except 1 or 2 mint leaves) into a smoothie maker or blender and blend until smooth. The consistency should be like milkshake.

Pour into a glass filled with some ice cubes and top with a few sprigs of mint.

If the summer’s got you hot and you’re looking for a cool way to chill, then the Zoku Quick Pop could be just the ticket. Gone are the days of do-it-yourself lolly pops taking hours to freeze, as now you can get your pop on in as little as seven minutes!

The Zoku Quick Pop comes with everything you need to make your own pops at home, including a base which you keep in the freezer, sticks, drip guards and a special pop removal tool.

As you can see from the photos, the Zoku certainly looks the part, but does it work? We put it to the test by by blending 1 banana, 1 tablespoon of runny honey, 2 tablespoons of 2% creme fraiche, a splash of milk and a pinch of cinnamon. We then poured the mixture into the Zoku…

Seven minutes later, and with a twist from the super tool, we’re enjoying our very own banana smoothie lolly pops! With a texture similar to a Mini Milk, and a cool banana taste with every lick, we’re happy!

With loads of recipes on their website and more being added, it’s clear you can get pretty adventurous with your creations. You could use fruit, chocolate, fizzy drinks or juices. Layer them to make colourful stripes or create a surprise center (the method for this made me laugh!).

My daughter is only a month old and I’m already looking forward to having fun with her, making some pops when it’s hot. The Zoku Quick Pop is simple, but that’s what makes it so successful and easy to use. Kids and grownups can now make their own colourful pops at home, and all that really limits you is your imagination.

How to win a Zoku Quick Pop!

Would you like to win your own Zoku Quick Pop Maker? We’ve teamed up with the nice people at Zoku and are giving one away!

For a chance to get your hot hands on this icy device, all you have to do is submit your best recipe for keeping cool in the sun. This could be a recipe for ice cream, a cooling drink or dessert or maybe something else? Just as long as you eat or drink it, and it cools you down.

The recipe has to be your own, or one of your families. So, no copying and pasting from another website (we do check). The deadline is midnight Sunday 15th August, when the winner will be chosen at random. Sadly we are only able to ship to the UK.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment. We look forward to seeing your creations. Good luck!

The Zoku Quick Pop Maker costs £39.95 (inc. free delivery) and is available from their website at www.zokuhome.co.uk. You can follow their Tweets twitter.com/ZokuUK or see their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Zoku