Jeni Britton Bauer - Jenis Splendid Ice Cream Desserts

New York

Ice cream desserts are like my favorite peoplethey look the best when they are starting to fall apart. Not sloppy, but confidently disheveled, like the late great Paul Newman stepping out of his race car, or Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, or Tatum ONeal in Paper Moon. Ice cream desserts have personality to spare. Sweetened cream slowly dripping from a frozen scoop transforms a cake or sauce the moment it touches it. Butterfat-rich cream absorbs scent and flavor and carries them to your nose. Anything ice cream touches becomes richer, more flavorful, more deeply perceived. Whats more, ice cream encourages you to be in the moment. Its melting and changing each secondyou have to pay attention to it, or it disappears.

In these pages you will find a few solid recipes that you will use over and over again and tweak with the season, the menu, or your whim. Each cake, pie, fritter, ice cream, sauce, and sundae is phenomenal in flavor and texture, and each recipe is designed specifically for the home kitchen. While I wont declare that every recipe in this book is fast and easy (even though many are), I will say they are as streamlined as we can make them and the results are truly worth the effort. You can dress them up or down, depending on how you plate them or which ice cream you serve with them.

When was the last time you had a Bette? Apple Bette is one of the finest recipes to serve with ice cream and my recipe calls for croissants or brioche that turn into a wonderful buttery fruit bread pudding. I also give you my recipe for Fruit Crisp because its darn good. Its a little crispier than others and theres too much streusel (that is, just enough). Then there are cobblers, and mine have extra fruit and creamy-as-heck biscuits plopped in. Like everything in this book, they're all tailor-made for a scoop of ice cream.

The ice creams that you will make from this book are as delicious as those we make in our professional kitchensutterly creamy and scoopable, with layers of flavoror I wouldnt put my name on it. New ones abound, including our Crme sans Lait (a vegan option that will knock your socks off), a rich and tasty frozen custard, and a soft-serve. The gooey sauces are as versatile as everything else we do and can be made with a variety of spices, salts, or herbs. Choose a cake, pie, or poached fruit from Bakeshop, pair it with an ice cream from Ice Cream Parlor, and top with a sauce from The Basics, and youve got a dessert that can accompany any meal or mood.

We have made and eaten these recipes over and over and are positively thrilled with the results. I hope that you will dive into this book and make it yours. Drip, drizzle, and mark up the pages at will! There is no better compliment in the world than a battered and beaten-up book.

In this book, I share my favorite desserts served over the years in our scoop shops, along with desserts our team enjoys during our company lunches and those I make for guests at home. The lineup includes cakes, pies, fritters, sauces, and much more. The recipes are low-fuss, big-bang, and very versatile. For example, can be made with almost any fruit. I like to squash them on the plate and drop ice cream right on top. The steam billows out, and the ice cream slowly melts into a sauce. If you carefully choose the ice cream and the fruit, you can determine the emotion of the dessert at your table.

Cakes exemplify how various compositions can be created using elements from different parts of this book. For instance, cake plus ice cream plus sauce plus garnishesall stacked together in a silicone springform moldmake for a superlative and add a colorful frozen yogurt, a fruit sauce, and fresh berriesits perfect on a Sunday afternoon with pink Champagne.

There are three main chapters in this book: Ice Cream Parlor, Bakeshop, and Sundae Bar. In Ice Cream Parlor, you will find our brand-new recipes, including Salty Vanilla Frozen Custard, Buttermilk Soft-Serve, and even an amazing dairy-free option, our Crme sans Lait. Bakeshop offers Stone-Ground-Grits Pudding Cake, Bauer House Biscuits, and more one-of-a-kind baked goodies, as well as Peoria Corn Fritters, an Apple Rhubarb Bette, and other tasty desserts to accompany ice creams. And Sundae Bar is chock-full of cocktails, sundae combinations, and plated desserts combining different elements from the other chapters.

Following these chapters is The Basics, which provides recipes that can be used in multiple ways in other recipes throughout the bookgravels, sauces, jams, glazes, and more.

For my first book, Jenis Splendid Ice Creams at Home, I set myself the challenge of developing recipes that produce the same taste, texture, body, and finish as those we make in our professional kitchens, using ingredients and equipment readily available to a home cook. The goal was to make ice creams indistinguishable from the Jenis scoop shop ice creams, and we succeeded. The project involved a retooling of every step of the ice-cream-making process, which is why my recipes are unique. People throughout the world now use my recipes to make ice creams for their friends and family. Ice cream businesses using my recipes have popped up across the country, from San Francisco to Brooklyn, and people from South Africa to Indonesia have been inspired by my recipes, techniques, and flavors.

The new recipes in this, my second book, are made on the same model, but they have been slightly updated to address changes in ice cream machines. Among the new machines, theres the ice cream bowl attachment for the Breville mixer, which we love, and a new version of the Cuisinart 1-quart canister machine, which is faster at freezing ice cream than the previous model. In fact, the newest Cuisinart freezes ice cream so fast that the body of the ice cream never has time to expand, and it comes out too compact. So, Ive adjusted my recipes to accommodate for that and to work well in the various Breville machines.

Although I am known for creating flavors that are all over the map, from sweet to savory, old school to new school, ancient to modern, the most important innovations in my ice cream recipes center on achieving that scoopable buttercream consistency. Once you master these recipes, you can create any flavor your heart desires. If you have an idea, try itif it works, put your name on it. Thats what Ive done for the last twenty years! Its what makes ice cream so much fun.

My hope is that the recipes for the new ice creams and desserts in this book will serve as a jumping-off point for all the wonderful flavors you are dying to makeand that making ice creams and other desserts will bring you, your friends, and your family as much delight as it has to ours.

If you are holding this book, chances are good you are a dairy and gluten eater. But chances are also very good that you know someone who, for whatever reason, does not eat either of these. Its nice to have options that work for everyonethat way, one of your guests isnt stuck with a pile of grapes for dessert while the rest of your table indulges in ice cream and cake. When you are hosting people, it is your job to make them feel good, so having a few reliable dairy-free, vegan, and/or gluten-free dessert options is a must. I have created recipes for my friends and relatives who live vegan or gluten or dairy freeand for their friends. But these are not recipes just for people who cant have what most of us canthey are desserts for everyone. Throughout this book, when a recipe is naturally gluten free or works well made with gluten-free flour, you will see this symbol: (G) .