The concept of this book is great for the creative home cook. Mix and match cookies with homemade ice creams to create your perfect ice cream sandwich. Of course you can follow Arias’ combinations to begin your explorations. I found a number of recipes that intrigued me. Overall I had better results with the cookie recipes than with the ice cream offerings.
Of the cookie recipes I tested, the Brown Sugar Cookies and Molasses Cookies were easy to make. One of the things I like about the cookie recipes is the size. Each one is geared to make about 20 cookies. Even just for the cookie recipes, I found this book worth keeping on my shelf. So many older recipes make much larger batches. Few of us need four dozen cookies on a regular basis these days.
Two cookie recipes received rave reviews from my taste testers. First, the Tiramisu Cookie is really interesting. This recipe doesn’t cook up like a typical cookie, but don’t give up. When you taste it the texture is remarkably like the lady finger cakes used to make Tiramisu. I didn’t expect this result. With the espresso powder in the cookie you truly get most of the experience of eating the classic dessert from our Italian restaurants.
The Mascarpone Ice Cream to go with the cookie was very difficult. I tried the recipe a couple times and different ways. Consistently the flavor was great and perfect with the matched cookies. However, I never did get the recipe to actually churn up like ice cream. Each time I ended up freezing the ice cream cylinder separately, in fact one time the ice cream maker ran for over 6 hours and the ice cream barely responded. We gladly ate the frozen and then barely thawed product. Although disappointed that it didn't “work” one of my guests who is allergic to eggs at least got to join us in eating the frozen Mascarpone mixture. I still wonder if no eggs and no cooking simply made it too difficult to get the desired result. Likely I will play with this recipe further to tweak it the way I want it to work.
The winner, however, was the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies. After a bit people wanted the extra cookies without the ice cream on them. With so many recipes to taste, I made smaller portions. This recipe made great results and everyone enjoyed it. I later made some tweaks for my own use. You can check out my new GF Peanut Butter Cookie recipe inspired by this book.
The presentation of the book is good overall. I prefer a cleaner layout. Most cookbooks today place one recipe per page. Likely to save some space, the recipes for cookie/ice cream combinations are placed immediately following each other. I flipped pages more than I prefer when working through a book. By contrast I love the pictures. You will definitely feel inspired by the photographs; they made my mouth water.
With the different elements of the book, I have to give it a middle rating. The cookie recipes were great. The ice cream recipes didn’t always work for me. Enticing photographs paired with a layout that was occasionally annoying. So while there are some real winners in this book as a whole it fell in the middle of the pack for me.
Of the cookie recipes I tested, the Brown Sugar Cookies and Molasses Cookies were easy to make. One of the things I like about the cookie recipes is the size. Each one is geared to make about 20 cookies. Even just for the cookie recipes, I found this book worth keeping on my shelf. So many older recipes make much larger batches. Few of us need four dozen cookies on a regular basis these days.
Two cookie recipes received rave reviews from my taste testers. First, the Tiramisu Cookie is really interesting. This recipe doesn’t cook up like a typical cookie, but don’t give up. When you taste it the texture is remarkably like the lady finger cakes used to make Tiramisu. I didn’t expect this result. With the espresso powder in the cookie you truly get most of the experience of eating the classic dessert from our Italian restaurants.
The Mascarpone Ice Cream to go with the cookie was very difficult. I tried the recipe a couple times and different ways. Consistently the flavor was great and perfect with the matched cookies. However, I never did get the recipe to actually churn up like ice cream. Each time I ended up freezing the ice cream cylinder separately, in fact one time the ice cream maker ran for over 6 hours and the ice cream barely responded. We gladly ate the frozen and then barely thawed product. Although disappointed that it didn't “work” one of my guests who is allergic to eggs at least got to join us in eating the frozen Mascarpone mixture. I still wonder if no eggs and no cooking simply made it too difficult to get the desired result. Likely I will play with this recipe further to tweak it the way I want it to work.
The winner, however, was the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies. After a bit people wanted the extra cookies without the ice cream on them. With so many recipes to taste, I made smaller portions. This recipe made great results and everyone enjoyed it. I later made some tweaks for my own use. You can check out my new GF Peanut Butter Cookie recipe inspired by this book.
The presentation of the book is good overall. I prefer a cleaner layout. Most cookbooks today place one recipe per page. Likely to save some space, the recipes for cookie/ice cream combinations are placed immediately following each other. I flipped pages more than I prefer when working through a book. By contrast I love the pictures. You will definitely feel inspired by the photographs; they made my mouth water.
With the different elements of the book, I have to give it a middle rating. The cookie recipes were great. The ice cream recipes didn’t always work for me. Enticing photographs paired with a layout that was occasionally annoying. So while there are some real winners in this book as a whole it fell in the middle of the pack for me.