38 Strawberry Month 2023 Recipes To Brighten Up Your Meals

While it may seem as if nearly every type of food, no matter how obscure, merits its own national day, only a few make it to the level of having a national month. Strawberries, however, are well-deserving of such an honor. Their month is May, a time when fresh local strawberries are starting to come into season even in states not named California or Florida.

In order to celebrate the strawberry, we've assembled a collection of recipes that showcase it in a number of different settings. We have strawberry breakfast recipes (smoothies, pancakes, and muffins), strawberry beverages both boozy and alcohol-free, strawberry salads that showcase the fruit's savory side (except for one recipe that's a salad in name only), and of course a plethora of strawberry-flavored desserts. Nearly every recipe on the list features fresh fruit, except for just a few where the strawberries are frozen, instead. Still, there's no reason why you can't start with fresh berries here, as well. If needed, you can just pop them into the freezer for half an hour or so until they harden.

Rhubarb and strawberries are baking besties because the tart vegetable perfectly complements the sweeter berry. Cook them together in a pie and you have yet another iconic summertime dessert. While this recipe makes use of store-bought pie crust as a shortcut, it does employ the time-consuming lattice-top technique. For a slightly less pretty but equally tasty pie, however, you could always go for a non-woven top crust or even a streusel one.

Recipe: Sweet And Tangy Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Chocolate-covered strawberries are something you'll tend to see in stores around Mother's Day since they're a popular gift for this May holiday, but the store-bought kind can be pretty pricey. If Mom always taught you the value of saving money by doing for yourself what doesn't need to be outsourced, then she'll definitely appreciate the homemade kind. This treat is actually quite easy to make since all you need is fresh, ripe berries plus some chocolate for melting. Going the DIY route means that you can customize the berries by using Mom's favorite chocolate (white, milk, or dark all pair perfectly with strawberries) and decorating the berries with coatings ranging from chopped nuts to coconut to crushed cookies.

Recipe: Easy Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Most pies really aren't all that easy, but this strawberry pie is an exception to the rule. For one thing, it starts with premade pie crust, always a good shortcut. In fact, you could substitute a graham cracker or chocolate crumb crust or even a toasted coconut one, if you'd like. The pie filling itself consists of nothing more than sliced strawberries cooked in a sugar syrup with a squeeze of lemon (plus cornstarch for thickening), but the best part is, there's no need for a top crust.

Recipe: Easy Strawberry Pie

Don't let the title fool you – and rest assured, it won't fool anyone else, either, if you try to sneak this dish into a potluck as a salad course. There's nothing remotely salad-like about it, not even in the Jell-O salad sense. Instead, this dish is a dessert bar, pure and simple. It starts off with a crushed-pretzel crust (the only remotely savory element, and even this includes sugar), followed by a cheesecakey type layer, and is topped off by strawberry gelatin mixed with strawberries. While the recipe calls for frozen berries, there's no reason fresh ones won't work. They may not mash quite as easily as thawed ones, but you can always chop them up in small pieces instead to make for some extra texture.

Recipe: Easy Strawberry Pretzel Salad

Strawberry cake made from a mix is bright pink in color, but it doesn't really taste much like berries. This cake, on the other hand, is a scratch-made vanilla bundt cake flavored with chopped strawberries. While the cake itself isn't pink on the outside (although it does have an attractive speckled effect once you cut into it), the glaze is made with pureed berries so it lends a nice pinkish hue. You can also add additional berries (sliced or whole) to the top of the cake as a garnish to make the flavor even more apparent.

Recipe: Strawberry Cake

Traditional margaritas can be somewhat astringent due to the tequila as well as the slight bitterness from the triple sec, but adding strawberries to the mix helps to smooth out and sweeten the flavor to a considerable extent. While you can still salt the rim of your glass if you wish, you could also lean into the sweeter side by going with a sugar rim, instead. If you don't want to take the time to freeze your berries prior to making the margarita, that won't be too much of a problem. You may just need to add a little extra ice if you'd like a thicker drink.

Recipe: Frozen Strawberry Margarita

Miniature desserts are not only cute but are also greatly appreciated by people who don't want to eat a heaping helping of sweet stuff. These portion-controlled cheesecakes aren't too difficult to put together as they're baked in paper-lined miniature muffin cups. The cheesecake itself is the plain, unflavored kind, but each itty bitty cake is topped off with a single strawberry slice to add just the right amount of fresh fruit flavor. If you'd like to dress the cheesecakes up even further, though, you could always brush a little melted strawberry jelly over the tops.

Recipe: Mini Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

If you want a dessert that's on the more nutritious side, you may want to pass on chocolate-dipped strawberries and try dipping your fruit in yogurt, instead. Yes, yogurt doesn't exactly solidify on its own the way melted chocolate will once it cools, but if you pop the berries into the freezer for a bit, it will freeze into a nice crunchy coating. This recipe calls for vanilla yogurt, but you could experiment with other flavors, as well. If you don't mind just a touch of added sugar, you could also drizzle your yogurt-coated berries with a small amount of melted chocolate.

Recipe: Yogurt-Dipped Strawberries

Tiramisu is typically a dessert that tastes of coffee and chocolate, although many recipes add some type of alcohol despite its not being original to the dish. Giada De Laurentiis' version of tiramisu is a fairly typical (albeit slightly boozy) one, but our fresh take on her recipe adds one extra element. Yep, you guessed it: We're tossing in some sliced strawberries. These add visual and textural interest to the dish as well as a hint of tartness that complements the tang from the mascarpone cheese. If you don't want to add rum, you can replace this ingredient with extra coffee or simply omit it since that only lowers the amount of liquid by 2 teaspoons, which won't make that much of a difference.

Recipe: Giada's Tiramisu

Strawberry shortcake may be a summertime classic, but it's one that many people are unable to enjoy due to the fact that the biscuits are often made with ingredients such as butter, milk, and/or sour cream, and the dessert is topped with whipped cream. In this vegan version, however, the dairy in the biscuits is replaced with plant-based milk and butter, while the topping is made from whipped coconut milk flavored with orange juice. The one inviolable element, however, is the strawberries, but luckily this fruit is 100% plant-based. (Because how could fruit be anything else?)

Recipe: Charity Morgan's Vegan Strawberry-Orange Shortcake

Icebox cakes may be trendy, but, as the name implies, the whole concept is a pretty old-fashioned one since it dates back to the days when refrigerators were still called iceboxes. While many such cakes are chocolate ones, this one is a lighter, fruitier dessert made with nothing more than graham crackers, whipped topping, and sliced fresh strawberries. Layer these ingredients like a lasagna, then let the icebox – oops, we mean the fridge – do the rest of the work as the crunchy crackers magically transform into something much more cake-like. (The strawberries, however, remain very much the same.)

Recipe: 3-Ingredient Strawberry Icebox Cake

No-bake cheesecakes are far and away the easiest kind to make, so it's always nice to see a new recipe for one of these. This one incorporates chopped strawberries into the cake batter (if it's still called batter when it doesn't need cooking) and, interestingly enough, also adds some lime zest, as well. There are a few items in the ingredient list that you won't see in American supermarkets, though. For the double cream, you can simply substitute whipping cream 1:1. While the recipe calls for digestive biscuits, you can use graham crackers in their place for a typical cheesecake-style crust or swap them out for shortbread or even chocolate cookies, instead.

Recipe: Make-Ahead No-Bake Strawberry Cheesecake

This extra-nutritious salad starts off with a base of iron-rich spinach, then piles on heart-healthy walnuts and fiber-packed strawberries. It even gets some calcium and protein from goat cheese, as well. The dressing, too, is quite healthy as it combines yet more strawberries with cider vinegar, olive oil, and honey. If you prefer that your salad dressing not be quite so sweet, though, you could always cut down on the amount of honey or even omit it altogether.

Recipe: Strawberry Walnut Salad

Shoney's family restaurant has its hits and its misses, as is the case with most restaurants, but its strawberry pie is solidly in the former category. As Shoney's isn't quite as ubiquitous as similar chains such as IHOP or Denny's, though, you may never have experienced this glorious pie for yourself. Luckily, it's actually pretty easy to make at home. Take a pre-made pie crust (deep-dish will work best), then fill it with fresh berries. Cover the fruit with a Jell-O-based glaze, then chill it for a few hours until everything gels. There's no need for baking at all, which makes this a perfect dessert for those 90+ degree days when you really hate to heat up the kitchen.

Recipe: Copycat Shoney's Strawberry Pie

This icebox cake, despite its name, is not at all old-fashioned, nor does it involve a simple mixture of strawberry and chocolate flavors. Instead, this very contemporary recipe spikes the macerated berries with chopped basil and lime. If you enjoy interesting new flavor combos, you may find that this dessert's right up your alley. If you have something a bit more traditional in mind, though, you can simply leave out the basil and lime and your chocolate-strawberry dessert will still be delicious (if a lot less trendy).

Recipe: Chocolate Strawberry Icebox Cake

Most copycat recipes are meant to recreate the original recipe as much as possible, but this recipe is actually another one that comes "with a twist." It does take the Pink Drink as its inspiration but omits the acai element, while the strawberry flavor comes from a teabag (Starbucks' version contains green coffee flavoring, but no tea). Yes, the flavor and texture might not be an exact dupe of the coffee chain's famous drink, but this recipe does omit the preservatives and makes use of fresh strawberries as a garnish in place of the dried ones used by Starbucks. 

Recipe: Copycat Starbucks Pink Drink

With most types of candy, it would be a real stretch (or outright fabrication) to describe them as nutritious. This fruit and nut-studded candy bark, however, has a base of plain yogurt sweetened with honey. You could, of course, use fruit-flavored yogurt instead, and you could also use any other kind of nuts you like in place of the pistachios. Tweaks can be made to the fruit mix, as well, although we'd suggest retaining the strawberries because we are celebrating their month, after all.

Recipe: Easy Frozen Yogurt Bark

It might seem as if bananas would be the star ingredient in anything called a banana split cake, but in this recipe, they actually share equal billing with sliced strawberries. This cake-that-really-isn't-a-cake has a graham cracker crust on the bottom, followed by a layer of Cool Whip combined with sweetened cream cheese. The bananas and strawberries come next, with more Cool Whip (cream cheese-free) and a few stripes of chocolate syrup topping things off. Although the dessert shown here is decorated with maraschino cherries, you could opt to replace those with sliced strawberries as a better indicator of what lies beneath the cream.

Recipe: No-Bake Banana Split Cake Perfect For Ice Cream Lovers

Yes, this is the third strawberry shortcake recipe on the list, but who's counting? We also like to ensure there's a recipe for every occasion, though, and neither of the other ones was super-quick and easy so they might not be something you'd bake in a hurry. To make this simple shortcake, though, all you need to do is to cook up some biscuits from a can (dip them in sugar first for some extra sweetness and sparkle), then top them with whipped cream and sliced berries. If you want something even simpler, you can always use whipped topping from a tub or whipped cream that comes from a can.

Recipe: 5-Ingredient Strawberry Shortcake