Perfectly Simple Ice Cream by Anthony Tassinello, Mary Jo Thoresen ISBN: 9798886504156
on April 30, 2024
Genres: Cookbook, Nonfiction
Pages: 248
Format: eBook
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Amazon, Bookshop.org, Better World Books, Book Depository
Discover how easy it is to recreate recipes from your favorite ice cream shop at home in this irresistible celebration of all things sweet and frozen. Brought to you by Anthony Tassinello and Mary Jo Thoresen, veteran chefs of Alice Waters's famed Chez Panisse restaurant, this book shows you how to whip up the perfect scoop of ice cream, sherbet, granita, frozen yogurt, and other delightful treats—from the classic and nostalgic flavors to the surprising and festive.
100 flavors to try — Explore unique recipes that showcase fresh, seasonal ingredients, such as London Fog Ice Cream, Creamy Lime Sherbet, Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream, and more!
Tips and techniques — Master your ice cream maker with step-by-step guidance for achieving smooth and delicious results every time.
Don't forget the toppings — Go the extra mile with a section of recipes for homemade toppings like Caramel Sauce, Candied Nuts, and Perfectly Whipped Cream.
Whether you're making ice cream for the first time, or looking for new takes on traditional favorites, this ice cream cookbook includes everything you need to create luscious desserts that everyone will love.
Ever since getting a Ninja Creami, I’ve enjoyed delving into ice cream recipes and the science behind one of my favorite treats. So when this showed up in NetGalley, I jumped on the chance to read and review it.
To be honest, I’m a bit torn on this cookbook. While the title promises easy, low-effort, recipes, the authors are professional chefs and so our ideas of ‘simple’ differ. I think the tagline of “100 recipes anyone can make” is slightly more accurate, as the majority of the recipes involve ingredients and cooking utensils found countrywide.
It’s an ARC, but it’s the roughest ARC I’ve ever read. The ingredients for each recipe were halfway through the recipe itself, every 7 words were missing 2-3 letters, and much of the text was light grey (on the medium grey background of my Kindle Fire). I have nothing against hyping a book through ARC reviews, but this book was a good argument for layout editors to meet some sort of minimum bar before asking readers to embark on that. Because of course it negatively colored my experience of the cookbook!
The pros:
- The recipes are organized in a way that makes it easy to hone in on your idea of good ice cream, whether that’s classic flavors, booze flavors, more edgy stuff, or whatever.
- No gastronomic Olympics here- the authors have a custard-style ice cream base and recommend fresh flavorings (fruits, herbs, etc.), but otherwise they don’t require specific machinery or complex timing.
- I appreciate that the authors advocate things like ice cream socials, and treated this sweet treat as not just a kids dessert.
- They did offer an egg-free ice cream base alternative, though not a dairy-free one (*whomp whomp*)
The cons:
- Despite being a book about ice cream, there were several recipes for other sweet frozen treats. I can forgive frozen yogurt being considered an ice cream, but granita are like Slurpees, not ice cream.
- Every recipe repeated the same ice cream base, instead of just putting it in the front and referring to it. It made the first half of each recipe feel like filler. And when a recipe is 4 pages long, it’s the opposite of ‘simple’. The editor should’ve insisted on more conciseness.
- I suppose anyone can make a prickly pear ice cream flavor, but where (outside of the southwestern US) are people going to find prickly pear? I wish they’d included comparable alternatives for the more exotic recipes.
- Every recipe was sized to make a party batch of ice cream (4 quarts, I think). I love ice cream, but I live alone and my ice cream maker can only handle a pint at a time. They did not provide any way to size a recipe down, or else it was totally illegible (you can’t always just cut everything in half.)
Despite that, I bookmarked a dozen or so to try sizing down for myself, because I’m just too darn curious and they sounded delicious. Flavors such as Ras el Hanout, London Fog, Chocolate Sherbet, Orange-Cardamom, and Amaretto with Dried Cherries.
Overall, I wouldn’t buy this cookbook, but I might flip through it at the library before remembering that the internet is full of great ice cream bloggers with truly simple recipes that are sized for 1 quart.
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