Blender

Kids, naturally, love this ice cream. And it’s easy enough that kids can put it together themselves with a minimum of help from Mom or Dad. To make it even more fun, layer in a swirl of their favorite jam.

If you’ve never made crêpes before, you’ll find that it’s one of life’s most satisfying accomplishments. You spend a few minutes dipping, swirling, and flipping and end up with a neat stack of delicious crêpes. As with traditional pancakes, the first one is usually a dud, so don’t be discouraged. Once you’ve slid a few out of the frying pan, you’ll feel like a pro. This recipe can easily be doubled and they freeze beautifully, so there’s no reason not to keep an extra stack in the freezer for a last-minute crêpe fix.

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.

When I see the first gorgeous baskets of strawberries at the markets, I know that spring has truly arrived and winter is a thing of the past. Since their season lasts throughout summer, you’ll find that this sauce goes perfectly well with any of the summer fruit and berry ice creams, sorbets, or frozen yogurts in this book.

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.

Either cantaloupe or honeydew melon makes a wonderful granita. Use the best you find at the market. Be sure to heft a few and take a sniff to find the sweetest specimen.

I know people who are grapefruit dependent. They’re addicted to starting their day with half a pink grapefruit. They absolutely have to have one, and frankly, that’s a little odd to me. It’s not that I don’t like grapefruits, and I often buy them with the intention of following in the healthy footsteps of my grapefruit-dependent friends. But the next morning I wake up and honestly can’t seem to face anything but a much-needed, soothing pot of coffee and a couple of nonconfrontational slices of buttered toast. Later in the day, those pink grapefruits become more and more appealing though, and I’ll slice one in half and greedily attack the sections, slurping up the plentiful juice while perched over the sink to contain the mess from my assault. So perhaps I do have some grapefruit issues of my own, but I wait until later in the day before I succumb and take my tumble off the citrus wagon.

Curiously, this granita really comes alive when a few grains of coarse salt are flecked over each serving. When I had friends over for a taste, they were surprised to see me salting their granita, but they quickly changed their minds when they tasted it. Try fleur de sel, hand-harvested salt crystals from France, or whisper-thin squares of Maldon salt, from England.

The arrival of cranberries in the fall magically coincides with the holiday food shopping frenzy. A wonder of nature? Or just good timing? Regardless, I’m happy whenever I find cranberries in abundance. Their flavor is invigorating and restorative, which is probably why they’re so popular around the time of year when many of us could use help after overindulging in copious holiday feasts.

Choose a fragrant, tasty variety of pear for this granita, such as Comice, Bartlett, or French butter. Few people think of pairing pears with chocolate, but it’s a surprisingly good combination, and once you taste it, you’ll wish you’d known about it sooner. Don’t hesitate to use one of my Perfect Pairings that follow the recipe to make up for lost time.

Serve the delicate, rosy crystals of this granita with a pour of sparkling wine, making a rather sophisticated slushie. Or perfume it with a few drops of fragrant rosewater sprinkled over to transform it into something curiously exotic and a bit elusive.

Cutting up a papaya can be a rather messy affair, with the dark, slippery seeds spilling all over the place. I always eat a few of them, which I call the caviar of the fruit world. Try a few; you’ll find they’re quite spicy and peppery. If possible, choose a brilliant orange variety of papaya. I find Latin American markets usually have the widest selection, with the best coming from Central America or Hawaii. Sometimes you’ll find giant papayas cut into small pieces, which gives you a good chance to check out the color of the flesh beforehand.

One of the best-tasting plums for cooking and eating is the Santa Rosa plum. Their meaty, succulent yellow flesh contrasts in color and flavor with the tangy purple skin. When cooked together, the sweet-tart flavors meld perfectly to make a heavenly granita. If you find it a bit too tart, serve it with a dollop of Whipped Cream (page 170).

Nectarines make a particularly enticing summertime granita that definitely merits precious freezer space as the temperature climbs. I patiently wait and wait for the first of the sweetest-smelling nectarines to appear, and then bang—I hit the markets, buying as many as I can. Try serving this granita surrounded by a mixture of raspberries, blueberries, and sliced strawberries sweetened with a touch of honey.

Kiwis are people from New Zealand. Kiwifruits are the emerald green fruits that we consume. The difference is important to New Zealanders, who are apt to look somewhat terrified if you present them with a bowl of sorbet and proudly tell them is made from fresh kiwis.

This sorbet should be frozen right after it’s mixed to preserve the fresh flavor and color of the bananas. They should be very ripe. If you want to add a spoonful or more of dark rum to taste, feel free to do so. One of my testers, Joanna, mentioned that this was the most budget-friendly dessert she’d ever made.

I’ll bet Dom Pérignon, the monk who is often given credit for inventing Champagne, would be turning over in his grave if he knew I had mixed his fizzy elixir with pineapple. But I’m sure I’d have his blessing if he tasted how good this combination is.

If you don’t have fresh passion fruit or pulp, make do by adding more tangerine juice. But I do advise looking around for it (see Resources, page 237), since its unmistakable flavor gives this sorbet an authentic taste of the tropics.

When I was a professional baker, foodies would walk into the kitchen, look down their noses at my gorgeous flats of cultivated blueberries, and sneer, “Oh, I only like wild blueberries.” Then they’d stand there making idle chat while grabbing fistfuls of domestic blueberries and gobbling them up. Wild blueberries are indeed wonderful, but they can be hard to find (unlike annoying food snobs), so you can use any kind of blueberry here. Just don’t gobble them all up, or let anyone else do so, before you get a chance to use them.