Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book

This cookbook gets a lot of use in my kitchen and it’s fun to read.

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book

Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield with Nancy J. Stevens

This is one of my favorite cookbooks.  It contains great recipes, a charming narrative and fun illustrations.  It’s true that I feel old every time I think about what I was doing when this book was published (1987) but that doesn’t stop me from returning to it time and time again.

The first 20 pages are dedicated to the story of Ben & Jerry’s and the theory of ice cream making, followed by 80 pages of ice cream recipes and finishing with 20 pages of baking, sundaes and sauces.

Of course, it’s the ice cream recipes that I return to again and again. In addition to recipes for all the classics such as Cherry Garcia, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and New York Super Fudge Chunk, there are a lot of flavors that are not sold in stores.  My personal favorite is cantaloupe.  Sweet cream base #1 is my standard ice cream base recipe (I substitute pasteurized egg whites for raw eggs).  In addition, throughout the book there is guidance on how to experiment and make your own flavors.

Unfortunately, since this book is so old, the latest Ben and Jerry flavors ares not represented.  This might disappoint some people who don’t remember “way back when.”  For me, the overall charm and usefulness of the book makes up for its age.