In New York, where I live, peaches mean summer. While rock-hard peaches can often be found in the produce section of my supermarket, a perfect summer specimen usually comes from the farmers market.

Those sweltering summer Saturdays at the market are the best. I always try to eat one ripe piece of fruit while I amble home, bags of groceries swinging from my arms, and inevitably soak myself in peach juice. I wait for that experience all year round. And when it finally comes, it’s over before I know it.

A peach that has been picked too early may never fully ripen. But a juicy tree-ripened fruit is too delicate for shipping. That means that those greenish peaches that you see in the supermarket, plucked far before they were ready in some place far away, won’t ever become that delicious. What’s a peach lover to do?

There is a solution: frozen peaches! Not all brands are created equal, but the best ones have been picked at their peak, and peeled, sliced and flash-frozen to seal in all that glorious peach flavor. You can use them in pies, cakes, smoothies and other treats. I even like to nibble on frozen slices as a snack. You can keep them in your freezer all year long.

Get the Recipe: Bourbon-Peach Hand Pies

Of course, the pleasure of chomping down on a fresh peach while the sun warms your shoulders is a wonderful experience. I’ll be munching on these bourbon-peach hand pies, made with frozen peaches, inside my apartment until it’s time.

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Samantha Seneviratne is a New York-based writer, recipe developer and food stylist. She is the author of The New Sugar and Spice (Ten Speed Press), a baking cookbook combining family stories and food history with recipes that reimagine dessert as a more balanced mix of sugar and spice. She blogs about dessert at Love, Cake.