Nut

No toga party would be complete without baklava. Of course, you could just go out and buy baklava, but this version is better than anything I’ve ever tried and is not difficult at all. It’s got the great flavor of the nuts and honey without being too sweet.

We always have bananas in our house, and therefore, we always seem to have a few that are too ripe to eat. What better way to use them up than to turn them into banana bread? Don’t let the color throw you. You can use bananas that are still all yellow, but you’ll need to mash them with a fork first to break them up. I actually prefer to use the ones that have a lot of brown spots or that are even almost totally black because they are very soft and mix in easily.

There’s nothing like the pleasant crunch of crisp, freshly toasted nuts. And there’s nothing worse than biting into an acrid, rancid nut. Since nuts have a relatively high amount of oil, you should taste a couple before using them to make sure they’re still fresh. Hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts are particularly susceptible to spoilage. Buy nuts from a store that sells in high volume and turns over its stock regularly and store them in a cool, dark place in a well-sealed container. Nuts can also be frozen in zip-top freezer bags. Most nuts taste much better if they’ve been toasted, which brings out their flavors and gives them a crunchy contrast in ice cream. The only nuts I don’t toast are pistachio nuts, since they’ll lose their delicate green color. Buy fresh pistachios from a good source so they’re crisp and vibrant green.

The unexpected crunch of poppy seeds in these very pretty, delicate cookie cups is the perfect foil for any homemade ice cream or a fruity sorbet.

These edible cups are easiest to bake on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, rather than thick silicone baking mats, since they’re whisper thin and somewhat fragile. Overturned teacups make the perfect molds, although you can use anything that’s relatively wide with a flat bottom, such as a custard cup. After baking, if any cookies cool before you’ve had a chance to mold them into cookie cups, simply pop the baking sheet back in the oven for about 30 seconds to make them supple and try again.

When I was looking for the perfect blondie, I went to the source on all things chocolate chipified: my good friend and fellow baker Dede Wilson, author of A Baker’s Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies. I knew she’d come through with a killer recipe, and boy, did she ever.

These oversized cookies are packed with nuts and chocolate chips, perfect for making the best ice cream sandwiches you’ve ever had, feel free to use as much ice cream as you like inside.

These are the best brownies for crumbling into ice cream, since they’ll stay nice and chewy even after they’re frozen.

I was an early trendsetter. I was snitching bites of raw cookie dough long before anyone else, way back in the sixties, so I would like to take credit for starting the craze. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the first kid to snitch a bit of raw cookie dough. But whoever came up with the idea for adding cookie dough to ice cream rightly deserves the accolades from ice cream lovers across the United States. (I’m not sure the idea of raw cookie dough in ice cream has international appeal.) This dough is packed with crunchy nuts and lots of chocolate chips, all embedded in a soft brown sugar dough. I debated with myself that this may be too much cookie dough for the average person to add to ice cream. Then, after much nibbling (while thinking about it), I decided that it was just not possible to have too much cookie dough!

This is a terrific recipe for preserving fresh cherries during their relatively short season. As they cook, their ruby red juices gush out and continue to deepen in color until they thicken to a flavorful syrup. Before folding them into ice cream, you’ll want to make sure they’re dry, since the liquid will muddy the ice cream. Drain the cherries in a strainer for at least 1 hour first, until they are sticky and dry (save the syrup for drizzling over ice cream). Then coarsely chop the cherries, or fold them into the ice cream whole as you remove it from the machine. Candied cherries are excellent on top of Lemon Sherbet (page 116) or Olive Oil Ice Cream (page 83), and on any homemade ice cream sundae you make as well.

If you like your brownies airy and not too dense, these are the ones for you.

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.

This delicate but highly flavored brittle may lose its appealing crispness after it cools, so I recommend baking it just an hour or so before adding it to just-churned ice cream. I like it mixed into ice creams that are exotically flavored, such as Anise Ice Cream (page 36) or Lavender-Honey Ice Cream (page 64). Sesame seeds are very flavorful, and you’ll find that a small amount of this brittle will provide lots of flavor to any ice cream you chose to mix it into. Feel free to add a little freshly grated orange zest to the honey as well.

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.

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.

It’s often said that when selling your home, you should bake something aromatic and spicy to entrance potential buyers with the homey scent wafting from the kitchen. These pecans are simple enough to make in the mad scramble before opening your house to strangers, and there’s no better way to fill your home with a heady mix of spices. I recommend folding them into Bourbon Ice Cream (see Variation, page 24), which you can happily eat to celebrate the closing of the deal.

When I put this recipe on my web site, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of comments and accolades. It seems I’m not the only one out there who craves toffee—especially this buttery-crisp candy enrobed in dark chocolate and showered with lots of toasted almonds. It’s very good folded into ice cream, and although the recipe makes a bit more than you’ll need, I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding something to do with the rest.

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.