Vegetarian

Tartufo means “truffle” in Italian and refers to how these ice cream mounds look when dipped in pure chocolate, which forms a neat, crispy coating for a favorite ice cream. You can make them any size you wish, but I usually make mine about golf ball size (about 2 ounces, 60 g, each) and serve two per person. The trick to making Tartufi is to work rather quickly and neatly. Keep the ice cream mounds in the freezer until the absolute last moment prior to dipping.

These edible cups are easiest to bake on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, rather than thick silicone baking mats, since they’re whisper thin and somewhat fragile. Overturned teacups make the perfect molds, although you can use anything that’s relatively wide with a flat bottom, such as a custard cup. After baking, if any cookies cool before you’ve had a chance to mold them into cookie cups, simply pop the baking sheet back in the oven for about 30 seconds to make them supple and try again.

This recipe makes jumbo-sized, chewy oatmeal cookies, ideal for sandwiching ice cream. They stay nice and moist after they’re frozen and are especially good (in my humble opinion) filled with Plum Ice Cream (page 77). Let them cool completely before trying to lift them off the baking sheet. They’ll be somewhat soft, since they’re designed to be retain their tenderness even after they’re frozen. Since these cookies are larger than normal, I find that I can get 6 onto a standard baking sheet (11 by 17 inches, or 28 by 43 cm), so that even when they spread, they don’t touch. If you have several baking sheets, this is a great time to put them into service. If not, let your baking sheet cool completely before baking the next batch of cookies.

These resemble the classic ice cream sandwich cookies but taste much better, and are far fudgier, than those soggy dark rectangles you’ll soon forget about.

When I was looking for the perfect blondie, I went to the source on all things chocolate chipified: my good friend and fellow baker Dede Wilson, author of A Baker’s Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies. I knew she’d come through with a killer recipe, and boy, did she ever.

These oversized cookies are packed with nuts and chocolate chips, perfect for making the best ice cream sandwiches you’ve ever had, feel free to use as much ice cream as you like inside.

These are the best brownies for crumbling into ice cream, since they’ll stay nice and chewy even after they’re frozen.

When I was at culinary school in France, my instructor advised adding a bit of salt when candying citrus peel. When I asked why, he said that for some reason it made the peel soften, but he couldn’t explain why. So although it may be just a culinary superstition, I’ve added salt ever since. If you aren’t superstitious, simply toss the salt over your shoulder and candy the lemons without it. Although it’s not required equipment, a candy thermometer will show you when the lemon slices are done. Fit the saucepan with the thermometer before starting. When the peel is candied, it should read 225°F (107°C).

I was an early trendsetter. I was snitching bites of raw cookie dough long before anyone else, way back in the sixties, so I would like to take credit for starting the craze. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the first kid to snitch a bit of raw cookie dough. But whoever came up with the idea for adding cookie dough to ice cream rightly deserves the accolades from ice cream lovers across the United States. (I’m not sure the idea of raw cookie dough in ice cream has international appeal.) This dough is packed with crunchy nuts and lots of chocolate chips, all embedded in a soft brown sugar dough. I debated with myself that this may be too much cookie dough for the average person to add to ice cream. Then, after much nibbling (while thinking about it), I decided that it was just not possible to have too much cookie dough!

This is a terrific recipe for preserving fresh cherries during their relatively short season. As they cook, their ruby red juices gush out and continue to deepen in color until they thicken to a flavorful syrup. Before folding them into ice cream, you’ll want to make sure they’re dry, since the liquid will muddy the ice cream. Drain the cherries in a strainer for at least 1 hour first, until they are sticky and dry (save the syrup for drizzling over ice cream). Then coarsely chop the cherries, or fold them into the ice cream whole as you remove it from the machine. Candied cherries are excellent on top of Lemon Sherbet (page 116) or Olive Oil Ice Cream (page 83), and on any homemade ice cream sundae you make as well.

These truffles will stay slightly soft in frozen ice cream. You can make them smaller or larger than indicated.

If you like your brownies airy and not too dense, these are the ones for you.

Croquant is French for “crunchy,” and this version certainly lives up to its name and reputation. This simple mix-in of toasted nuts enrobed in glossy caramel is wonderful when crushed and added to ice cream. You can crack it as fine, or as coarse, as you want. One tip: Adding the nuts to the caramel while they’re still warm will make them easier to mix.

This delicate but highly flavored brittle may lose its appealing crispness after it cools, so I recommend baking it just an hour or so before adding it to just-churned ice cream. I like it mixed into ice creams that are exotically flavored, such as Anise Ice Cream (page 36) or Lavender-Honey Ice Cream (page 64). Sesame seeds are very flavorful, and you’ll find that a small amount of this brittle will provide lots of flavor to any ice cream you chose to mix it into. Feel free to add a little freshly grated orange zest to the honey as well.

You don’t need me to tell you that Peanut Butter Patties are the best when embedded in any chocolate-flavored ice cream. Use a commercial brand of peanut butter when making these since natural-style peanut butter will make them too runny. If you want tinier pieces in your ice cream, simply shape the mixture into smaller patties. And although they’re rich, if you want more to add to your ice cream, it’s easy to double the recipe.

These mint disks are adapted from a recipe passed on to me by Elizabeth Falkner, the owner of San Francisco’s deservedly popular Citizen Cake bakery. The mixture is simple to put together, and you can adjust the mint flavor to your liking. Taste a bit and add more if you wish, as mint extracts and oils vary. I make my Peppermint Patties very minty, which is especially important when they’re crumbled into deep, dark chocolate ice cream, a combination I call “The Girl Scout Cookie Effect.”

If you take a bite of the finished Oatmeal Praline (which I don’t recommend, however tempting), you’ll find that it’s stubbornly hard. But don’t worry. Once you’ve smashed it into bits, folded it into your favorite ice cream, and left it in the freezer a bit, the pieces will soften up perfectly and become toothsome nuggets.

In spite of what you might see on television or read in cooking magazines, restaurant cooking is demanding, hectic work. Luckily, I baked professionally with Mary Jo Thoresen for many years, and although we worked really hard, we survived by finding humor in the craziest things, which would make no sense to anyone but us. We did everything from making up movie titles by substituting with the word “quince” in them (A Room with a Quince, Quince on a Hot Tin Roof, etc.) to writing a rap song about baking. At perhaps the depths of our silliness, we became obsessed with all things Scoopy, the clown on the box of ice cream cones you buy from the supermarket. Soon I started finding little pictures of him stuck in the oddest places in the pastry area where we worked. (I even discovered one on the windshield of my car one night after work.) Naturally, my nickname became Scoopy. Now that we’ve both become grown-ups, Mary Jo (aka Scary Jo) is the pastry chef at Jojo restaurant, which she co-owns, in Piedmont, California. Here’s her recipe for Peanut Brittle, which she crushes into brickly bits and adds to Vanilla Ice Cream (pages 24 and 25), dousing it with warm chocolate sauce for a wonderfully over-the-top peanut brittle sundae that should make sense to anyone. If you want to get creative, try mixing Peanut Brittle bits into Fresh Ginger Ice Cream (page 43) or Peanut Butter Ice Cream (page 50), and top it off with chocolate sauce as well. Whatever you mix it into, I’m sure you’ll find the result absolutely scoop-endous.

It’s often said that when selling your home, you should bake something aromatic and spicy to entrance potential buyers with the homey scent wafting from the kitchen. These pecans are simple enough to make in the mad scramble before opening your house to strangers, and there’s no better way to fill your home with a heady mix of spices. I recommend folding them into Bourbon Ice Cream (see Variation, page 24), which you can happily eat to celebrate the closing of the deal.

When I put this recipe on my web site, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of comments and accolades. It seems I’m not the only one out there who craves toffee—especially this buttery-crisp candy enrobed in dark chocolate and showered with lots of toasted almonds. It’s very good folded into ice cream, and although the recipe makes a bit more than you’ll need, I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding something to do with the rest.