Strawberry Sandy Recipe

This recipe is for hot summer nights, when ice cream is too heavy for dessert and fruit is not quite enough. Where do you turn for dessert inspiration? When in doubt, think about breakfast. Think about all of those bacon-maple-chocolate spin-offs and cereal-flavored ice creams now in existence. Now think about granola with fruit and yogurt. This combination is right and fine in the morning — luscious summer fruit, soft rounds of yogurt, and honeyed clusters of granola. But think of its potential as a dessert, where the yogurt is more like cream and the granola closer to candy. My recipe was influenced by Jacques Pépin’s Fast Food My Way, where he uses crushed cookies as his granola and crème fraîche as yogurt. It has all the elements of a good bowl of granola with none of its early morning prudishness. I have substituted full-fat Greek yogurt for the crème fraîche, and created what in my mind is the perfect “granola” by mixing Scottish shortbread biscuits with a few amaretto cookies. The rather strong whiff of the amaretto cookies is reduced to a faint almond aroma in the midst of the shortbread butter crumble, and its sweet crunch is the ultimate granola you’ll never have for breakfast.  Click here to see 9 Ways to Enjoy Summer Strawberries.