Ice cream maker's cookbook

[wdames]

What would you consider the best cookbook to buy for my new whynter ice cream maker?

[morwen]

This is a great website for ice creams in addition to "The Perfect Scoop". I've made several of Kieran's recipes and they all have been superb (plus it's free!)!

http://www.icecreamireland.com/

Look on the right sidebar, scroll down to recipes, and click on the ice cream link.

[LJS]

I have Weinstein's book and it is fine and a great intro to a specific approach with lots of variations. Its a bit dull, though.

For fun, you can also try the Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book. It uses a different and somewhat contraversial technique...the custard is not pre-cooked and cooled before freezing: the cream base with raw eggs is used straight. This means the results should not be used for infants or those with compromised immune systems unless you really know your egg supplier. I live in the country and I do, so no problems with family and most guests. The results are wonderful!

[mattstolz]

i just dug this book up in my parent's basement, copyright 1987. haha

i am yet to try any of the recipes out of it yet, but am pretty excited about it. do you have one of their recipes that you like best?

[LJS]

The French Vanilla (p. 35) is superb...I add the scrapings of a single vanilla bean to the eggs to add authenticity and use vanilla sugar if I have that on hand for a triple vanilla whammy.

Ben's Chocolate (p. 44) is excellent.

The Coffee Ice cream (p. 66) is as good as the Haagen Daz version, IMHO: we use espresso leftover from breakfast stove-top Bialetti method, but I heard the other day that there is an instant expresso powder available somewhere. Medaglia d'Oro, perhaps?

Finally, this can't happen this time of year and maybe never in your part of the world, but there are wild blueberries hereabouts and if there are near you then you must try the Wild Blueberry Ice Cream on p. 59

Good luck!

[bushwickgirl]

Actually, although I just "like" owning books up the yin, whether I need them or not, both ipsedixit and mattstolz have very valid points, and David Lebovitz has a great website/blog with lots of his ice cream recipes for free. Google can also be a very knowledgeable and generous source for this subject.

Ice cream is one of those things that, once you get the basic technique down, and it's not rocket science, you can expand on to your heart's content. Ther are many threads on ice cream making and trouble shooting here @ Chow, as well, including this rather wacky and controversial one:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/716517?tag=footer_recommendation%3bboard_discussion_module_small#5713346

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/category...

Enjoy!

[mattstolz]

if you MUST buy a book, Perfect Scoop is for sure the way to go. its awesome.

but really, with sites like this one, Foodgawker, and so many others, i dont even think you really need one! you can find almost all the recipes from Perfect Scoop around the internet

[mangeur]

In fact, most of David's recipes are available on his website.

[mattstolz]

very true! along with several other good suggestions that didnt make it into perfect scoop i noticed (i dont own any of his other books, so i dunno if they happened to be in other ones or not)

but his website (and being a fan of him on facebook!!) are very helpful. he posts good ideas up to facebook almost every day!

[ipsedixit]

No disrepct meant by this, but why do you need a cookbook for ice cream?

Learn the basic technique of how to make ice cream with a custard base, and without. (Easily found by Googling.)

Then, after that, it's all about experimentation, which (at least for me) is one the major reasons why I love making ice cream so much.

[katecm]

I have to say, I disagree. If you're experimenting with add-ins, it's very easy to throw off the entire fat balance and end up with unpleasant ice cream. I also had a specific kind in mind once and found one online. It was icy and hard. I scrapped it and went back to him for reference, and it turned out beautifully.

[ipsedixit]

katecm,

This is not meant to be directed personally at you, but my feeling is if a person *can* only make ice cream by following directions on a page from a book, then that person is better off just buying the stuff from a store or the market.

Part of the enjoyment of making ice cream at home (or really just cooking at home), is the experimentation once you have the basic technique down.

Yes, absolutely, a person trying to make inventive flavors at home will have epic failures (goodness knows, I have had mine), but that person -- either through dogged determination and myopic perserverance or just pure luck and happenstace -- will create ice cream so magical as to make that person never want any other dessert in life, ever.

Creating that magic on your own not only heightens the experience and enjoyment but it fosters a certain sense of achievement and (most importantly) self-confidence that can never be provided, in my opinion, by simply following instructions on a page ripped directly from a big book.

Just my 0.02, of course.

Cheers.

[katecm]

I understand what you're saying, and think that this can be applied to any sort of cooking at all, but the OP has a new machine and is looking for a good cookbook. I suggest that he or she get Lebovitz and learn from that. I think a few epic failures at the beginning will turn him or her off ice cream pretty badly.

[Jay F]

What is the BFD about buying a cookbook? It sounds as if the OP has never made ice cream before. I would think anyone would want to know how to do something before they become creative with it. You can even go to ice cream making school, and I think there's a fairly good chance they teach things you might not already know.

And anyway, cookbooks are nice.

[The Dairy Queen]

Here's some good threads on The Perfect Scoop:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/416279?tag=search_results;results_list
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/538600?tag=search_results;results_list
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/538603

~TDQ

[Becca Porter]

Definitely The Perfect Scoop.

[bushwickgirl]

Quaditto on The Perfect Scoop recommendation, and I have heard good things about The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, but never used it.

[Coogles]

"The Perfect Scoop" by David Lebovitz is often recommended. You can see a preview of the book at Google Books here...

http://books.google.com/books?id=8rkn...

or just search for the title at books.google.com.

[nofunlatte]

David Leibovitz's The Perfect Scoop is an excellent ice cream book. I also like Bruce Weinstein's Ultimate Ice Cream Book -- the recipes are a bit less rich though you certainly can "fatten them up" if you want. Leibovitz has more exotic recipes but the lemon ice cream in the Weinstein book is delicious and frequently requested by friends and family.