Ice Cream

At our East Village Milk Bar, we have two big-boy soft-serve machines that churn ice cream day and night. To keep ourselves entertained and to keep customers interested, we change the flavors every six weeks, basing each flight of flavors around a theme. This recipe was part of a suite of ice creams flavored liked baked goods, and, true to its name, it tastes just like cheesecake. The twist with it and our key lime pie ice cream was crazy good!

We use cake scraps in our kitchen for just about anything. Really. Even ice creams, where they add body, texture, and depth of flavor. We put chocolate cake scraps in the red velvet ice cream because we want it to taste like red velvet cake. We also like to take it too far and swirl red velvet ice cream with cream cheese frosting ice cream.

Cereal milk is made. Panna cotta, conquered. Easy, right? On to ice cream. Scoop the ice cream into your favorite pie crust (see page 59 for our Cereal Milk Ice Cream Pie), sandwich it between your favorite cookies (mine is the Cornflake Chocolate-Chip-Marshmallow Cookie, page 55), or scoop it into a bowl and decorate with your favorite breakfast cereal and jam or jelly.

Like the original, fruity cereal milk ice cream can be used to fill any of the pie crusts in this book or in a milkshake (fruity cereal milk blended with fruity cereal milk ice cream will change your life). We like it best straight out of the freezer, or scattered with Fruity Pebble Crunch (page 52) on top.

Kids, naturally, love this ice cream. And it’s easy enough that kids can put it together themselves with a minimum of help from Mom or Dad. To make it even more fun, layer in a swirl of their favorite jam.

Just about every gelateria in Italy features a bin of stracciatella, vanilla ice cream with chocolate “chips.” It results from a technique that clever Italians devised for pouring warm, melted chocolate into cold ice cream. The flow of chocolate immediately hardens into streaks, which get shredded (stracciato) into “chips” as the ice cream is stirred. The trick to stracciatella is to pour it into your ice cream maker in a very thin stream during the last moment of churning. If your aim isn’t very good, or your ice cream machine has a small opening, transfer the melted chocolate into a measuring cup with a pouring spout. (If you’re using a microwave to melt the chocolate, simply melt the chocolate in the measuring cup.) The trick is to pour it not on the turning dasher (mixing blade) but into the ice cream itself. You can also drizzle it over the ice cream as you layer it into the storage container, stirring it very slightly while you’re pouring.

My lifelong dream is to own an ice cream shop. But rather than start from scratch, there’s one in Paris that I used to dream of taking over: Raimo. The interior was a perfectly preserved midcentury ice cream parlor, with curved, undulating ceilings, shiny leather-and-chrome swivel chairs, and a truly contemporary touch for a city as old as Paris—a machine dispensing ice water. Très moderne. In spite of an unfortunate recent remodel, Raimo still serves an unusual frozen glace called fleur de lait, which means “flower of milk.” Although they once invited me into the workshop for a tasting, I was too intimidated to ask for the recipe. So I played around in my kitchen and got it just right by using cornstarch instead of eggs, which not only preserves the milky whiteness of the cream and milk but also adds a pleasing richness that’s not overwhelming. If you ever come to Paris, stop in at Raimo. And if you see me behind the counter churning away, you’ll know I’m no longer just a contented customer but a happier glacier.

If you’re lucky enough to snag a reservation at Le Grand Véfour, the restaurant that presides over the splendid Palais Royal in Paris, you’ll be treated to a culinary tour de force. In this jewel box of a restaurant, my advice is to sit back and let chef Guy Martin and his staff pamper you like royalty, which they have elevated to an art. When it comes time for dessert, you scan the menu, but… “Can that be right?” you think to yourself, trying to recall snippets of your high school French. Indeed, chef Martin is fond of using vegetables in unexpected ways, often in desserts. But if you’ve ever enjoyed a wedge of carrot cake, you’ll know that it’s not so strange. This ice cream is inspired by a dessert I had at his restaurant: a small, crispy cone filled with bright green ice cream that had the dewy taste of tiny spring peas. At home, in addition to serving it for dessert, I’ve found that it makes a lovely garnish to a bowl of chilled summer soup.

Black pepper ice cream tastes spicy and lively, as you probably can imagine. I like it as a contrast to sweet summer berries, or pears roasted with a swirl of dark honey in autumn. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, crack the peppercorns in a heavy-duty plastic bag with a hammer.

After an exotic Indian or Moroccan feast, sprinkle this ice cream (and your guests) with a few drops of rosewater and top it all off (the ice cream, not your guests) with a few toasted pine nuts. For a stunning presentation, serve it on a platter with thinly sliced oranges dusted with cinnamon and scattered with candied French Almonds (page 189).

This ice cream is very popular at a wine bar I frequent, where it’s served floating in a fruit soup surrounded by fresh berries. The contrast between the parsley-flecked ice cream and the rosy red berries floating in pink syrup is almost too lovely to eat. But after a few glasses of wine, inhibitions are lost and you’re more susceptible to sly attempts of culinary persuasion. Believe me, the combination sounds perfectly reasonable after a couple of glasses of Chablis. I use only flat-leaf parsley, which has a subtle hint of anise flavor. It first gets blanched and then shocked in ice water to preserve its brilliant green color. Note that this recipe makes only about a pint of ice cream, perfect for a small get-together. Double the amounts if you wish.

Standing in front of an immense, intricately carved wooden door in Fez, Morocco, my guide handed me a big bunch of fresh mint, shoving it firmly under my nose and telling me not to move it from there or I’d be sorry. Sure enough, when the gate swung open and we entered a tannery I kept my face deeply buried in the mint, as advised, and was happy for the good advice. Afterward I didn’t want to part with it since I love the aroma of fresh mint so much. I use mint for much more than an air freshener. It makes a wonderfully invigorating ice cream. I’ve planted mint in my garden against the warnings of friends, who say it’ll take over before I know it, but I’ve never had a problem using it all. And they’ve never had a problem eating the ice cream I make from it either.

Italians will often serve a Torta di Verdura for dessert, a cross between a cake and a tart packed with leafy greens. The first time I tried it I was unsure if I’d like it, but I found it unusually delicious and devoured the slice offered. Italian basil, which has a slight aniselike scent, provides the base for this herbaceous ice cream. This is wonderful to make in the summer when large bunches of basil are abundantly available at the market.

I’ll admit that my favorite selection from the shiny white Good Humor jalopy that cruised our neighborhood was simply called Toasted Coconut: vanilla ice cream on a stick, coated with lots of sugary-sweet coconut. On the last fateful day that I’d ever see the Good Humor man, the bully next door decided to spray him with water from a hose as he slowly circled our block. He beat a hasty retreat and never came back. Being blackballed by the Good Humor man made that the worst summer of my life. I don’t know what happened to the neighborhood bully, but now that I’m an adult I can have Toasted Coconut Ice Cream whenever I want. And I do. This ice cream is pictured marbled with Mango Sorbet (page 108).

This frozen yogurt is a snap to put together, especially welcome in the summer which is when you may want to limit your time in a warm kitchen. But don’t let its ease of preparation fool you; this vibrantly colored frozen yogurt provides the biggest blast of strawberry flavor imaginable.

Brilliant pink fresh strawberry ice cream is a classic flavor and, along with chocolate and vanilla, is an American favorite. I’m a big fan of any kind of berries served with tangy sour cream, but I think strawberries are the most delicious, especially when frozen into a soft, rosy red scoop of ice cream. Macerating the strawberries beforehand magically transforms even so-so berries into fruits that are brilliantly red. Try to eat this ice cream soon after it’s been churned.

This is the first ice cream that springs to mind when people recall hand-cranked, old-fashioned fruit ice creams from their past. More than any other homemade ice cream, this is perhaps the most beloved of all flavors and is indeed best when spooned right out of the machine, just moments after it’s been churned. An easy way to peel peaches is to cut an X at the bottom and then lower them in a pot of boiling water for about 20 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the peaches to a colander and shock them with cold water, then let them cool. Afterward, you’ll find their fuzzy peels just slip right off.