Vegan

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.

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.

I was going to call these “Walnuts Gone Wild” but took a less seamy route and decided on simply Wet Walnuts. You can draw your own conclusions. But there’s nothing indecent about these maple-glazed walnuts, except how good they taste.

These easy-to-make peanuts will make you feel like a chocolatier assembling a world-class candy bar. If you’re anything like me, you can’t keep chocolate bars around the house without breaking off a hunk every time you pass by, so by all means double the recipe if you want, just to make sure there’s enough for folding into the ice cream later on.

This is one of my all-time favorite and most requested recipes. These nuts are lots of fun to make, and you’ll feel like a real candy maker as you triumphantly tilt your first batch out of the pan. Whole almonds get cooked in a syrup, simmering until the sugar crystallizes and clings to them, creating a crackly caramelized coating. This recipe can easily be doubled.

There are really simple to make and will make you feel like an accomplished candy maker with minimal effort, and they’re very good too. I like these crunchy, salty peanuts liberally scattered all over the top of a towering hot fudge sundae. You’ll notice that I use raw peanuts, not ones that have been previously salted and roasted. If you wish, you can use unsalted preroasted peanuts (which, amusingly, are often called cocktail peanuts) and reduce the baking time to 15 minutes.

After dinner at the marvelous L’Os à Moelle in Paris, I finished up with a dessert of housemade ice cream topped with the most perfect, crispy caramelized almonds I’d ever imagined. After leaving, I passed the kitchen window, where chef Thierry Faucher was leaning outside taking a break. I waved, and he waved back. So I got up the nerve to ask him how he made those fabulous almonds. He hefted a pitcher of liquid, and told me they were simply coated with equal parts water and sugar. The next morning, I immediately started tinkering around and came up with just the right proportions for making these incredibly addictive crispy flakes of almonds.

If you’re as wild about sour cherries as I am, you’ll be as happy as I was to discover that big jars of them are available in Eastern European markets and specialty grocers (see Resources, page 237). They come packed in light syrup and are a fraction of the cost of their pricey Italian counterparts, and they’re simple to candy yourself. Once cooked and cooled, if you wish to mix the cherries into ice cream, drain them of their syrup completely (until they feel dry and sticky), and then fold them into your favorite flavor. I recommend White Chocolate Ice Cream (page 33), or try the Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry Ice Cream (page 60). Or simply use one, or more, to top off an ice cream sundae. (Save any leftover syrup to mix with sparkling water to make homemade sour cherry soda.) This recipe calls for 3 cups of cherries, which includes their syrup.

One of my great pleasures in life is stopping at one of the “shave ice” stands (as the locals call them, inexplicably dropping the “d”) in Hawaii. I watch as they tuck sweet red beans in the bottom of a paper cone and then pile on the shaved ice. I always choose lilikoi, or passion fruit syrup, to be drizzled over the ice. It has remarkable complexity and tastes as if every possible tropical flavor has been packed together into one intensely flavored fruit. Then a shot of sweet milk is poured over it all. I slurp the whole thing down, then I’m ready to tackle the surf again. Or, more likely, just take a snooze under the shade of a palm tree. The inspiration likely came from Japan, where red beans are spooned over ice cream or puréed for beautifully intricate pastries called wagashi. You can easily make them at home from adzuki beans, available in well-stocked supermarkets and natural food stores. Their sweet-starchy flavor is justifiably popular and is especially good paired with Asian-inspired ice creams, like Green Tea Ice Cream (page 40) and Toasted Coconut Ice Cream (page 96). I find chewing on these sticky little beans positively addictive.

All raspberry sauces need not be created equal. Unlike the previous sauce, this one is loaded with big, chunky raspberries. It was inspired by a sauce that baking guru Nick Malgieri whizzed up during a cooking demonstration, and I’ve been making it ever since.

I’m a big fan of the all-American blueberry, and why not? They’re so easy to transform into a versatile sauce that’s equally at ease atop Philly-friendly Cheesecake Ice Cream (page 62) or alongside Hollywood–healthy Vanilla Frozen Yogurt (page 49). Or forge a Franco-American alliance by adding crème de cassis, the deep, dark black currant liqueur from Dijon (see the Variation at the end of the recipe).

This sauce is so intensely flavored that just a minimum amount is needed for maximum impact. It goes particularly well over anything sharp and lemony, such as Super Lemon Ice Cream (page 85) or Lemon Sherbet (page 116).

Coulis is a fancy word that simply means a sauce made with fresh, uncooked ingredients. Feel free to change the mix of berries as you wish, depending on what’s available. If you find fresh red currants at your market, the tangy little berries are a wonderful addition.

The sweet-tart taste of candied pineapple spiked with real vanilla makes a lovely accompaniment paired with any tropical fruit–flavored ice cream or sorbet. Be sure to cook the pineapple long enough so the juices and sugar mingle together and caramelize to a dark amber color for maximum flavor.

Do you have OSD? When you see something in a saucepan, do you find that you can’t stop yourself from giving it a stir? If so, you’ve probably got obsessive stirring disorder, and you need to curb that kind of behavior to caramelize sugar properly. Mix the sugar as little as possible, just enough to keep it from burning. Stirring encourages the jagged little crystals to join together and crystallize, which you want to avoid. If crystallization does start to happen, remove the pan from the heat and tenderly stir it to dissolve the crystals before adding the water and lemon juice. This lemony sauce is superb when drizzled over any lemon-flavored ice cream served in Profiteroles (page 232), or along with ice cream–filled Crêpes (page 233).

Not only does this chewy candied peel make a tasty tangle atop a scoop of citrus-flavored sorbet or ice cream, but it’s also terrific drained, finely chopped, and folded into just-churned Super Lemon Ice Cream (page 85), Fresh Ginger Ice Cream (page 43), or Cheesecake Ice Cream (page 62). If you don’t have a candy thermometer, simply cook the peel until most of the liquid has boiled away and the fine threads of peel are shiny and translucent.

To make the tastiest and most colorful granita, be sure to select kiwifruits that are tender and soft to the touch. They’ll have the most vibrant green flesh and the fullest, most tropically tinged flavor.