Ice Cream

Leaving the skins on the peaches for the purée makes for a beautifully pink swirl in this refreshing summer dessert.

This autumnal dessert is prepped in advance and then completed at the table—a delicious time saver!

One day when I was working at River Café in Brooklyn, I smelled an unfamiliar odor coming from the pastry kitchen. I opened the oven and saw charred pieces of orange wedges. Thinking something was wrong, I took them out of the oven and chucked them into the garbage. I recut fresh oranges and put them in the oven, saving the day. I was wrong—I got yelled at for the one-hour setback to the pastry chef's special that night. By roasting oranges and their peel at intense heat, you toast the essential oils, changing their flavor. It brings out the appealing natural bitter elements in an otherwise sweet fruit. This ice cream is amazing with almond, chocolate, vanilla, and other neutral-flavored desserts that could use something to jazz them up.

We were over the moon at how the little bits of toast retained their crunchy, buttery, and, well, toasty qualities in the midst of all the rich, creamy coolness.

Far and away our most popular flavor.

To create this Girl Scout cookie–inspired dessert, combine vanilla ice cream with the coconut, caramel, and chocolate cookies known as Samoas or Caramel deLites. The final touch is a drizzle of chocolate and caramel sauces.

Here's another dessert that was inspired by a wine-tasting dinner. It's often hard to come up with a dessert that pairs well with wine, but this savory-sweet dessert does. At its center is a Seckel pear, a small, reddish pear with a slightly spicy flavor. It has a firm flesh that makes it perfect for poaching. In this dessert I poach the pears in pomegranate juice with some ground black pepper. A chunk of Cabrales cheese, a strong blue cheese from northern Spain, is sandwiched between the top and bottom halves of the pear, and a Szechuan Ice Cream is served with it, sitting on a diamond of baked almond cream.

This zabaione (zabaglione) and lemongrass ice cream dessert is adapted from Chef Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy. It is his unique take on a lemon tart, served upside down and smashed. According to Chef Bottura, "this dessert pokes fun at our daily striving for perfection and pristine beauty. I love the dynamics of a lemon tart but hate all the fuss—cream decorations and stubborn crusts. To get around all that nonsense, we purposefully crushed our tart. Of course, it isn’t just a one-liner but full of flavored experience from the most fragile crust to the peaks of tart, sour, sweet, cured, and candied lemon on the plate." This recipe makes 2 large tarts: You can make 2 and freeze 1 (keeping all elements separate in the freezer and assembling just before serving) or you can halve the ingredients.

For Halloween, we attempted to break the record for the world's loudest scream—the acknowledged "Scream of Ice Cream." To coincide with the attempt we created the world's first "ice cream soup," a bowl of steaming hot 
pumpkin soup with a scoop of pumpkin ice cream dropped in the middle. I loved it, but it left everyone else in meltdown. In the end we ran out of time to stage the world-record 
attempt, and killed off ice cream soup, but we kept spiced pumpkin ice cream alive.

As anyone who knows me will testify, my body is a temple. A Buddhist temple. Friends have cruelly suggested I had been in training for the following events in the London 2012 Olympic Games—the diabetics and the paralytics. In response, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by undergoing an eight-day hunger strike outside the home of the prime minister in protest about the lack of equal parenting rights in the UK. By Day 6, an armed response team were protecting David Cameron's refrigerator and I would have killed for a quiche. I knew licorice had to be in the book after I began hallucinating about a character made from assorted licorice candies. The Prime Minister subsequently sent me a letter as slippery as his preelection commitments.

The only thing better than a favorite dessert is two faves in one— without twice the calories, of course.

Some research suggests dark chocolate reduces cravings for sweet, salty and fatty foods. But don't worry—the effects won't kick in until after you've cleaned your bowl.

Spicy-sweet cardamom is a perfect complement to bitter coffee, and baked phyllo pieces add carby crunch without an overload of calories.

Use a pre-made custard as your base and paddle in a sweet-and-boozy cherry and bourbon topping.

There's nothing, um, vanilla about our homemade version of the classic. Of course, it also makes a great base for your favorite upgrades.

To make this easy ice cream, strain hot custard over semi-sweet chocolate and fold in malted milk balls once the custard has cooled.