Even though food scientists have told usthat eating ice cream will not cool you down for more than a few minutes at a time, I am more than willing to take those few minutes of coolness on a hot summer day if it gives me an excuse to eat ice cream. But as I think about it, cream-based desserts/snacks - like ice cream - tend to coat your mouth as you eat, and that’s not exactly a welcome thing if you’re already parched. So, I’m using the excuse to eat a far more refreshing, fruit-based gelato when the temperature is up.I used mango as my base, since I love the fruit and it’s a flavor that you won’t find just anywhere. Fresh, ripe mango will work well for this recipe, but I actually used some jarred mango (packed in juice) that is carried by Trader Joe’s because the fruit is consistently good and I knew that it would be a good way to ensure that I had enough ripe mango for my puree. I added a bit of lime juice to temper the sweetness of the mango. Lemon or orange juice would work equally well; I happen to like lime/mango combinations.

The resulting gelato is very creamy with a bold, natural, fruity flavor. I didn’t quite feel like I was biting into a ripe mango, as I have felt after eating some top-notch artisanal gelatos, but the flavor was outstanding and head-and-shoulders above most I have tried. I also enjoyed the hint of lime in the mixture. When I work with this recipe in the future, however, I think that I will try some variations, substituting out part of the mango pulp for peaches or berries to get a different take on this.

My final note is that it’s pretty important to have an ice cream maker of some kind to make this recipe. You can pour your chilled mango mixture into a freezer container and stir it around with a fork to break up the ice crystals and freeze it into a scoopable treat over a period of a few hours this way, but you won’t get the same creamy texture that the churning of a machine - electrical or manual - can give you.

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 I have always been a fan of cookies n’ cream ice cream, where chunks of chocolate, oreo-type cookies are blended into a creamy base. When I have a couple extra cookies on hand and a batch of ice cream or frozen yogurt that needs spicing up, I’ll often chop them up and throw them into the mix. This time I was making a batch of vanilla pudding pops and decided to see how I could incorporate the same technique.

I don’t recall ever seeing a cookies n’ cream popsicle in the freezer section of the grocery store, so when I began I didn’t have a reference as to how the cookies should be suspended in the pudding. I wanted to keep the cookies in fairly large chunks and immediately ruled out trying to stir them into the pudding as it cooked.

I ended up crumbling one cookie into the base of each popsicle mold. As the warm pudding was poured in, the cookie pieces swirled around and evenly distributed themselves in the popsicle, creating a more perfect pop than I could have hoped for. The result was delicious and addictive.

I included corn syrup in the recipe because it helps the pudding pops maintain a nice, smooth texture when frozen, cutting down on the formation of ice crystals that plague homemade popsicles. That said, the pudding pops will still be quite smooth if you don’t use the corn syrup, so it’s not a big deal if you prefer not to use it in your version.

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They might not have the most exciting name and they certainly aren’t going to be found on the dessert menus at any gourmet restaurants, but Crunchy Banana Pops are a fantastic summertime treat. These pops are made with frozen bananas that are coated in honey and rolled in puffed rice (a.k.a. Rice Krispies). The original recipe came from one of the first cookbooks I ever had and was in instant hit because it was something that I could make all by myself. In fact, this is a perfect recipe for kids or those who are looking for an extremely simple, but cool, snack.

Frozen bananas may not sound like much of a treat when you think about rich ice creams and decadent gelatos, but as they defrost them become just about as creamy as either - and significantly healthier for you. The honey is poured onto the frozen bananas and solidifies quickly, leaving a sweet and sticky, but not runny, outer coat. The puffed rice adds enough crunch to contrast perfectly with the creamy banana, making the treat perfectly balanced - although a drizzle of melted chocolate isn’t necessarily a bad idea either.

Start with ripe, but not overripe, bananas and plan at least an hour in advance so they have time to freeze. Once assembled, the banana pops can be eaten right away or put back into the freezer for storage for several days.

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I love the idea of mix-ins for ice cream and I know I’m not the only one, as evidenced by the continually growing popularity of ice cream shops that offer mix-ins to their customers. More frozen yogurt shops are starting to offer the same service, so frozen treat fans can get the same combinations in a slightly healthier way. Aside from standards like chocolate chip and cookies and cream - which are familiar and rather obvious ice cream/frozen yogurt additions - why not use the mix-in technique at home to make some more unusual combinations? Or, you could co-opt the combinations advertised by some of the chains into far less expensive versions.

Inspired, I recently added  some chopped up carrot cake to a batch of homemade frozen yogurt to create Carrot Cake Frozen Yogurt. (It’s not as strange as sounds - really! One company actually makes an ice cream flavor like this!) The slightly spicy cake went well with the relatively plain vanilla fro yo and I loved the novelty of having little bits of cake in my ordinarily smooth dessert. I added the cake during the last minutes of mixing in my ice cream maker so that it would be blended into the yogurt, rather than just sitting there in chunks.

I would add carrot cake to yogurt again in a heart beat, but this little experiment motivates me to experiment with other mix-ins. Maybe crushed biscotti, chocolate covered strawberries or a mix of bananas and peanut butter? If you’re at a loss for ideas, don’t forget that there is always the standard fallback of mix-in ice cream stores: candy bars.

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Just when you probably thought that I wasn’t going to do any more ice cream posts, here is one more. After I posted the basic recipe for banana buttermilk ice cream, Fanny left a comment about making something similar: roasted banana ice cream. I was intrigued. How would the caramel-like flavor translate to the tangy ice cream?

I opted to caramelize my bananas on the stovetop instead of roasting them, though I think that grilled bananas would be a fantastic alternative. I thinnly sliced the bananas and dropped them into a hot pan. I don’t think that they needed any butter or sugar, but you could certainly add a tablespoon (or two, of sugar) if you prefer. The bananas cooked until they were golden on both sides before I transfered them to a large bowl and mashed them somewhat. Some chunks remained, but all were small.

I combined the bananas with the ice cream base and let it chill until quite cold before pouring it into my ice cream maker.
The result was a slightly tangy ice cream that was both caramel-y and banana-y. (Like those -y endings?) The overarching flavor was the buttermilk, with the banana flavors rounding it out very nicely. This would be fantastic with either chocolate or caramel sauce. Maybe both.

If bananas aren’t your favorite thing in ice cream, try the Black Cherry variation that I posted at Slashfood. Depending on your tastes, it might be even better.

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 I had a good time with the two-tone milkshakes that I made last week and decided to use the same effect to make these ice cream sandwiches. And by this, I mean that I made them with half vanilla filling and half chocolate.

Ice cream sandwiches are really simple to make because you don’t have to actually make anything in order to make them. You can buy all the ingredients you need. Of course, there are some things that you should keep in mind if you’re doing this. Here are a couple of tips:

First, choose with a soft or chewy cookie so that it doesn’t crack and crumble all over the place while you’re eating it. Second, get the best and most strongly flavored ice cream you can find, since you’re only using a small amount and want the flavor to come through. Third, chocolate chip cookies pair very well with vanilla ice cream, the standard filling for a sandwich.

The technique involved in putting the sandwiches together is quite simple. You need to take the ice cream out of the freezer and let it soften until it is easy to handle with a spoon. Once it is sandwiched between two cookies, wrap the whole thing in a small piece of plastic wrap and freeze until solid. With individually wrapped cookies, you’ll never have a problem grabbing one for a snack, and doing them one at a time allows you to get each sandwich into the freezer without worrying about the filling melting too much.

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