Growing up on the East Coast, August meant summer was on, full tilt. Now that I have school-age children and live on the West Coast, I have to pack what was once four weeks of glorious relaxation into two; they start school in mid-August! I try to hold on to that summer feeling for dear life—and get most of it through the delicious food I pull together from summer ingredients.

Caesar salad on a stick? Yes, along with the classic wedge of iceberg with bacon or a refreshing Asian chicken salad—these exemplify the food crafting approach. By deconstructing salads that are traditionally tossed and threading the ingredients onto skewers, we have changed the way it feels to eat a salad. At the height of the summer, when vegetables are in their prime, it’s nice to be able to taste a tomato’s full flavor, a scallion’s sharp bite, and a pure chunk of Parmesan. Summer is for improvisation, and we say go for it.

To that end, our hope is that the sweet pizza in this chapter will inspire you to come up with your own visual tricks. Where pizza dough is expected, we put a sweet cookie with a mix of cream cheese and heavy cream standing in for the mozzarella cheese, and fresh berries are scattered about for the topping. Mini ice cream cakes, made in muffin tins and frosted with whipped cream, are our homemade answer to that childhood favorite, the Carvel ice cream cake. This is the month for soaking it all in—fresh, fun food, sun, sand, salt air, and easy breezes.