All-American Fruit Desserts

• recipe

  Sweet Cherry Pie

  Cherry season is a mere blip on the summer-produce radar. For a juicy pie with the best fruity flavor, we’d have to look beyond the cherry tree.

• recipe

  Skillet Apple Crisp

  Apple crisp invites a devil-may-care attitude: Slice up any old fruit, sprinkle on a topping, and bake. Perhaps that’s why it’s never on anyone’s A-list.

• equipment

  Ice Cream Scoops

  Almost every ice cream scoop can do the job—but we demanded ease and comfort.

• taste test

  Supermarket Vanilla Ice Cream

  Twenty-one Cook’s Illustrated staff members sampled eight national and regional brands of vanilla ice cream plain in a blind tasting, rating each on vanilla flavor, texture, and overall appeal.