Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones

One of the most fun things about traveling is getting to try regional and local specialties. In some cases, these might be exotic, savory street foods and snacks. In others, it might be getting to taste a scoop of ice cream from an exceptional ice cream shop. Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: 90 Recipes for Making Your Own Ice Cream and Frozen Treats from Bi-Rite Creamery is the cookbook from the popular San Francisco creamery that allows you to get a taste of what they have to offer without even leaving your kitchen. The ice cream shop produces intensely flavored ice creams in classic flavors that will satisfy your sweet tooth better than you could have expected.

The cookbook provides a great introduction to making your own ice cream by starting off with a discussion of the ingredients, tools and techniques that you need to make great ice cream at home. At the ice cream shop, they use all organic or handmade ingredients, and always work with fruit that is ripe and in-season – even though that means discontinuing some of their most popular flavors during the off-season. To get the best results, you should follow the same philosophy and choose high quality dairy for your ice creams and fresh, in-season fruit. The better your ingredients, the better your ice cream will be. For true ice cream lovers, a simple home ice cream maker (the authors used a simple frozen-bowl style machine) is going to go a long way in helping the quality of your ice cream and will become a much-loved appliance, especially during the summer months.

The tutorials given for producing each style of frozen treat, from ice creams to granitas, are excellent and by the time you get to the recipes, you’ll already feel like a pro. The recipes are organized by flavor – Vanilla, Caramel, Chocolate, Citrus, Nuts, etc – and they are easy to navigate. The ingredients for each recipe are simple, though some recipes do use multiple components in the finished dish, such as the Coffee Toffee Ice cream. Even with the most complex recipes in the cookbook, the directions are very clear and easy to follow, with plenty of tips that will guide you through any trouble spots and plenty of beautiful photos to inspire you to make every recipe in the book.