Make the most of summer with plenty of garden parties and barbecues — and desserts, of course

Summer is the perfect time to book some get-togethers with friends and family. If you’ll be making the most of the warmer months and hosting your gatherings outdoors, take a look at our recommendations for delicious BBQ desserts.

Here you’ll find delicious crowd-pleasers, BBQ dessert classics, and a few lesser-known sweet treats. Before you dive into these desserts, take a peek at these main course cocoa recipes for your barbecue.

Delicious BBQ desserts

Is there anything more scrumptious than open-air eating? There’s just something about the sunshine, birds tweeting, and sway of the trees that makes dinner time all the more enjoyable.

Ask your guests if they have any dessert suggestions, whip up a nostalgic recipe from your childhood, or try some of our BBQ desserts below. We recommend double-checking that none of your guests have any allergies or dietary requirements that you’ll need to take into account.

Remember, there’s no rulebook for hosting barbecues, so feel free to tweak any of these desserts to suit your preferences.

Chocolate baked bananas

We love the combination of chocolate and banana. So much so that we created our Banana Smoothie Selector and Banoffee Pie Selector.

When a barbecue is on the cards, making chocolate-rich baked bananas is hard to resist. The BBC Good Food website has a simple Chocolate Baked Bananas recipe. Cold vanilla ice cream, indulgent melted chocolate, and warm sticky banana is a trio made in heaven.

Just make sure you use high-quality, ethical chocolate in your chosen chocolate grade. Our cooking chocolate batons and slabs are particularly excellent for chocolate banana recipes.

BBQ Salted Caramel Vodka bananas

If you’d prefer your baked bananas with a boozy twist, try our Salted Caramel Vodka Bananas. You can make these by taking this BBC Good Food recipe for Rum & Caramel Bananas and switching the rum for our irresistible Salted Caramel Vodka Liqueur.

We think these are the perfect post-BBQ sweet treat with just enough alcohol to give it a cheeky edge.

You can still pair these bananas with an ice cream flavour of your choice and an extra drizzle of chocolate if you feel inclined.

Grilled pineapple

Sticking with the fruit theme, our next dessert is Grilled Pineapple. While pineapple is a fabulously fragrant, citrusy, and tangy fruit, popping it on the grill really takes things to the next level.

We adore this Hairy Bikers’ recipe for Grilled Pineapple with maple syrup, rum, ground ginger, lime, and yoghurt.

This dish is perfect for piling onto a plate and passing around the crowd. A simple, speedy, and healthy treat.

S’mores

Ah s’mores — the classic American dessert. This is a wonderfully messy and fabulously simple, campfire treat that is sure to be a hit with children and adults alike.

All you need is malted milk biscuits, creamy milk chocolate, and marshmallows. Plus an outdoor fire. If you have a campfire, not just a barbecue, this is even better.

For a full guide, take a look at our article on how to make s’mores.

Your guests will adore how gooey and sweet these “biscuit sandwiches” are. You can even make your s’mores extra luxurious by choosing to make them with premium, high-quality marshmallows and chocolate.

Grilled fruit kebabs

Fancy bringing a range of fresh fruit into your dessert mix? Create some Grilled Fruit Kebabs.

All you need to do is chop up your favourite fresh fruit into bite-size chunks that can slide onto a skewer, add around 5-7 pieces of fruit to each skewer stick, and place them on the barbecue until lightly charred and soft.

We think fruits such as pineapple, peach, kiwi, strawberry, and banana all work well. You might have to experiment with different combinations to find your favourite selection.

If you’d like to see some recipes for inspiration, here are some from Delish and Favourite Family Recipes. They use grills, but you can easily cook the skewers on your BBQ instead. Just watch them closely to ensure they don’t get burned!

We love our fruit kebab BBQ desserts with a drizzle of dark chocolate.

Hot chocolate

Even in summer, it can get chilly pretty after the sun goes down. Why not offer your barbecue attendees a warming mug of real hot chocolate to keep them cosy? Make them extra smooth and silky with our Velvetiser machine and take a look at our range of indulgent hot chocolate flavours and grades made with real chocolate flakes.

Offer everyone a shortbread biscuit to dip into their hot cocoa — they’ll feel warm and snug in no time!

A mug of drinking chocolate is perfect for sipping in front of the campfire, cuddled up on patio seating, or inside the house if the weather takes a turn.

Tips for getting the most out of your BBQ desserts

Outdoor flames can be a little temperamental, which can make cooking on them unpredictable. You can’t use set cooking times like you can with your oven and there’s a lot more guesswork involved.

The best thing you can do to ensure your BBQ desserts turn out delicious is to keep a close eye on what’s cooking. Your dessert could be taking its time to cook one minute and burning the next — all because of the wind and changing the intensity of the flames.

Assign someone to watch the desserts and turn them over if necessary. It’s easy to get lost in conversations when you’re hosting a barbecue, which is great — but not worth ruining dessert over!

Also, check how many people want dessert before adding all your skewers or bananas to the barbecue. These desserts don’t always work too well with reheating, so it’s best to make them on demand as people would like them.

Enjoy your BBQ desserts. We hope the weather allows you to sample a few from this list!