Ice, ice, baby
Frozen desserts are tough to beat when the weather gets hot. But billing your cookbook as "The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book" (Morrow, $17), as Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough do, creates quite an expectation. Don't look for ice creams or sorbets in the book, those were covered in an earlier book by the duo. But if you seek recipes for gelati, granitas, sherbets and even the rarer semifreddo, this is the book to store right next to your ice-cream maker.


An ice-cream maker is required for almost all of the recipes, except the granitas, which can be mixed, cooked or blended and then simply frozen in your freezer. Stock up on whole milk, eggs, and unflavored gelatin if you're planning to work your way through much of the book — with those, a few staples, and a variety of fruit and chocolate, you should be set for ingredients.

My family especially liked the pineapple sherbet, a tart and sweet treat that was simple to make. I also savored the grapefruit version, but my husband couldn't reconcile the sharpness of the fruit with the sweet creamy texture of the sherbet. Rice-pudding gelato, not as common here in the U.S. as in Italy, proved to be a delightful and different treat — as the book says, much like eating frozen rice pudding. The book also follows each recipe with a variety of ways to customize it, to your tastes, whether by adding fruit, cookies, coffee, or rum.

A section near the end of the book offers recipes for frozen cakes and pies, often using the gelati or sherbets made using earlier recipes. Many require a springform pan, and since mine has seen better days, I tried one of the few that didn't require one: a frozen pineapple and coconut pie. Unfortunately, it flopped: Despite careful folding-in of both homemade meringue and whipped cream, the pie fell as flat as a beach towel. Still, in summer's heat, these recipes are as soothing as a dab of Solarcaine. —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

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