Rose Levy Beranbaum - Roses Ice Cream Bliss

Photography team RoseWood: food stylist Katie Wayne, photographer Matthew Septimus, me, Woody, and food stylist Erin Jeanne McDowell

Copyright 2020 by Cordon Rose LLC

Photography copyright 2020 by Matthew Septimus

Ice cream cone icons by Kasha Malasha/Shutterstock.com

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beranbaum, Rose Levy, author. | Septimus, Matthew, photographer.

Title: Roses ice cream bliss / Rose Levy Beranbaum ; photography by Matthew Septimus.

Other titles: Ice cream bliss

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019033902 (print) | LCCN 2019033903 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328506627 | ISBN 9781328506689 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ice cream, ices, etc. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX795 .B467 2020 (print) | LCC TX795 (ebook) | DDC 641.86/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033902

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033903

Cover design by Tai Blanche

Cover photography by Matthew Septimus Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Food styling by Erin Jeanne McDowell

v3.1020

To Owen Eliot Daw, who introduced me to Turkish ice cream and the joys of being a grandmother.

The first cake Rose and I baked together was the Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake. Rose recommended a whipped chocolate ganache for the frosting. The result was a near-perfect cake, with a delicate fine crumb and light but luxurious icing.

Mind you, this was twenty years before I actually met Rose, but as anyone who has used her cookbooks knows, to read her recipes is to have Rose in the kitchen with you, encouraging, teaching, and cheering you on.

A few years ago, my friend Susannah Appelbaum invited me to come to Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York, for a cooking and wine event. You can meet Rose Levy Beranbaum, she said blithely, as if the thought of meeting the Notorious RLB didnt instantly make me break out into a cold sweat. I think you two will really get along.

After I watched Rose demonstrate her technique for making scones, Susannah pulled me up to meet her. Dry-mouthed, I tried to say something clever but opted for Delicious! and then offered up a fawning smile and shook her hand. Afterward I screwed up the courage to send her an email, and a correspondence and friendship instantly bloomed. A few emails and a few months later, I felt as if wed known each other for years, because thats the kind of embracing person Rose is.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself in the basement kitchen at Roses house in rural western New Jersey. All I could focus on was the shelf full of sprinkles. Just as a tailor shop has every color of thread, Roses kitchen has every color of sprinkle. I couldve spent hours looking through drawers and examining her well-labeled ingredients. My reward for tearing myself away from the kitchen was a slice of sunshine-yellow lemon curd tart, which managed to be both creamy and pucker-worthy, accompanied by an espresso to which Rose had added a demitasse spoons worth of homemade dulce de leche.

And now, a few years later, she is like family, because thats how Rose is.

Rose never shows up empty-handed. There was a taco lunch at a restaurant where a slice of milk chocolate caramel tart magically appeared out of a small bag. I ate it as an appetizer. She showed up to my house with slices of milk bread she was testing. My kids glormed it up in seconds, but it wasnt quite good enough for Rose and she continued to work on the recipe. I may or may not have secreted away a few slices of chocolate babkathe first and only babka I ever wanted to eat more of. That was only outdone by a memorable single rugelach that came wrapped not just in plastic wrap, but also a layer of bubble wrap to keep it pristine on the ninety-minute journey to my house.

Its not just my family and I who have come to expect delicious surprises. My dog Bosco barks joyfully when he sees Rose and her collaborator, Woody, coming up the front walk. He recognizes the interlopers as purveyors of frozen bones that have been carefully saved for him from steak dinners.

I must be clear, however: There are terrible downsides to being Roses friend. Especially during the testing phase of the ice cream book youre holding in your hands, I would more often than not find myself meandering my way through a half-wilted mediocre lunchtime salad when up would pop an email from Rose. It would contain nothing more than a photo of just-made blackberry ice cream or maybe grapefruit ice cream or a few chirpy thoughts about how wonderful her lunch of prune-Armagnac ice cream tasted.

My patience paid off on a stinking-hot August day. I drove out to her house to interview her for Edible Jersey magazine and was greeted with a homemade chocolate ice cream cone filled with a subtle and elegant hazelnut ice cream. Rose had even tucked one Piedmontese hazelnut at the bottom of the conea clever trick to keep the fast-melting ice cream from leaking out of the cone.

Let me reassure you that even if you never have the chance to meet Rose in person, her personalityher exuberance and meticulous attention to detailis infused into the pages and recipes of all her cookbooks.

It shouldnt surprise anyone that the doyenne of cake baking now has an ice cream cookbook, for what better friend is there to cake than ice cream? The surprise, however, is that for a woman who has made her name with cakes and baking, her favorite dessert is actually ice cream. That lovenay, passionis evident on every page of this book.

Of course this cookbook features recipes for stellar versions of basic ice cream flavors, such as vanilla and chocolate, but our Rose doesnt stop there. Among others, there is all-season apricot ice cream, dark brown sugar ice cream, and a Bust my Bourbon Balls ice cream, which churns her well-known boozy confections into vanilla ice cream.

I have the email correspondence to prove that Rose spent months trying out new and varied flavors for ice cream. The result is this glorious book, which will appeal to ice cream purists and adventurers alike.

Rose is a generous friend, an enthusiastic listener, and an engaging storyteller with a warm voice, lilting laugh, and sharp wit. The truth is, even if Rose never fed me another scoop of hazelnut ice cream, I would still be content to have the pleasure of being her friend.

Now, if anyones looking for me, Ill be the one sitting contentedly eating raspberry butterscotch sauce by the spoonful, waiting hopefully for an email from Rose.