Cree - Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream: The Art and Science of the Scoop

Copyright 2017 by Dana Cree

Photographs copyright 2017 by Andrea DAgosto

Illustrations copyright 2017 by Anna Posey

Photographs on copyright 2017 by Andrew Nawrocki

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cree, Dana, author.

Title: Hello, My Name is Ice Cream / Dana Cree; photographs by Andrea D'Agosto ; illustrations by Anna Posey.

Description: First edition. | New York: Clarkson Potter, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039388 (print) | LCCN 2016041469 (ebook) | ISBN9780451495372 (hardback) | ISBN9780451495389 (Ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ice cream, ices, etc. | Frozen desserts. | BISAC: COOKING / Courses & Dishes / Desserts. | COOKING / Specific Ingredients / Dairy. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX795 .C73 2017 (print) | LCC TX795 (ebook) | DDC 641.86/2dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039388.

ISBN9780451495372

Ebook ISBN9780451495389

Book and cover design by Ian Dingman

Cover photographs by Andrea DAgosto

Cover illustrations by Anna Posey

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Like most of you, my relationship with ice cream started so young, there isnt a time I can remember without ice cream. As I grew up, my favorite flavor changed over and overand at some point I became militant about my ice cream not touching my cakebut cold, creamy, lickable scoops of ice cream were always there. When I was an adult and went to pastry school, and I learned how to make ice cream, it seemed nothing short of a magic trick.

In the sixteen years since, my career has taken me into fancy restaurants, where I was afforded great room for creativity, advancing both my skills and my catalog of outlandish flavors. (Burnt artichoke ice cream, anyone?) I carried stunning composed desserts into the dining rooms of these restaurants and set them before guests, thrilled to share these unexpected flavors and textures with them. But, at some point, it felt disjointed, pouring my soul into desserts that I could only share with a handful of fortunate folks, in places where often even I couldnt afford to eat.

It was then that ice cream really became my favorite thing to make. Ice cream is accessible to everyone, everywhere. Any person I meet, of any age, can tell me what their favorite flavor is, and it almost always brings a smile to their face. Like me, hardly anyone can remember their first bite of ice cream. Its just always been there, sitting next to our birthday cakes, scooped into cones handed to us by our parents, presented at school parties, and served on a weeknight for no reason other than a treat. Here was a dessert I could pour myself into, and share with everyone, because they were already sharing it with each other.

When I moved from my hometown of Seattle to work in Chicago, I started packing pints of my ice cream for sale in a butcher shop called Publican Quality Meats, labeled with brightly colored Hello My Name Is stickers. It was then that I had a chance to reconnect with the kinds of ice creams people want to eat as a scoop. I mean, ice cream flavored with masathe dough you make tortillas fromwas delicious as a part of my butterscotch, corn, and cape gooseberry dessert, but you probably wouldnt sit with a big ol cone of it. So, I jumped back into the world of beloved flavors like salted caramel, and I dove deeper and deeper into the world of add-ins, and started composing scoops of ice creams as I would a dessertwith sauces, chunks, and chewy bits strewn throughout. (Youll find some of these pint-worthy combinations in the chapter.)

When I grew past the hows and started asking about the whys of ice cream making, I fell into a serious rabbit hole of scientific knowledge thats taken me ten years to hoist myself out of. I wanted to learn why the amount of butterfat in a recipe matters, what various sugars do to the texture, how the speed of churning ice cream makes a difference. I wanted to understand these and a thousand other things so I could know how to make my ice creams smoother or chewier or richer or brighter or more flavorful. I collected as much information as I could from the internet and textbooks, and I had a lot of help from a chef I met when I cooked at The Fat Duck, Chris Young, who co-authored the massive bible of modern cooking, Modernist Cuisine. And then I literally went to Ice Cream College, a.k.a. the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course.

By now, Ive filled my head with ice cream, as an art and as a science, and I finally feel I can teach what Ive learned along the way and help guide others in their ice cream journeys. It goes back to why I started to pack pints in the first placeto share the joy of ice cream with everyone. I hope this book inspires ice cream lovers not only to re-create the recipes Ive included here but also to take the knowledge Im sharing and create whatever your heartor inner kiddesires.

How to Use This Book

This book is designed for ice cream makers at every level. You can use it to guide you through your first batch of ice cream, to help you understand how to combine the ingredients, and how to use your ice cream machine. If youve already mastered that, you can explore the recipes for different styles of ice creams and discover different ways of flavoring them. When youre ready to mix-and-match, this book is here to help you create scoop-shopstyle ice creams of your own design, filled with homemade chunks, ribbons, cookies, and chewy doodads. And finally, if you are ready to really invent, you can use the scientific breakdowns to help you achieve textural and flavor mastery of your own ice creams. Its designed to be what you need, when you need it, and to be there for you as you grow as an ice cream maker. I only wish there were a way for us to share a taste of what you create!

This book is written in three primary sections:

This is your ice cream hows-and-whys reference manual. In this section youll find all the information youve ever wanted to know about ice cream, and a few things you probably never imagined you could know, like an in-depth look at the five components of ice cream and their physical properties. Youll meet the agents of textureingredients that stabilize water and lock ice into placeand learn when to employ them.