Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
With little skill, surprisingly few ingredients, and even the most unsophisticated of ice-cream makers, you can make the scrumptious ice creams that have made Ben & Jerry’s an American legend.

BEN & JERRY’S HOMEMADE ICE CREAM & DESSERT BOOK tells fans the story behind the company and the two men who built it-from their first meeting in 7th-grade gym class (they were already the two widest kids on the field) to their “graduation” from a $5.00 ice-cream-making correspondence course to their first ice-cream shop in a renovated gas station.

But the best part comes next. Dastardly Mash, featuring nuts, raisins, and hunks of chocolate. The celebrated Heath Bar Crunch. New York Super Fudge Chunk. Oreo Mint. In addition to Ben & Jerry’s 11 greatest hits, here are recipes for ice creams made with fresh fruit, with chocolate, with candies and cookies, and recipes for sorbets, sundaes, and baked goods. The 90-plus authentic recipes are spiced with Lyn Severance’s bright, quirky, full-color illustrations. Over 383,000 copies in print.

Customer Reviews

Great book, great recipes. by Frequent Shopper
Enjoyed reading the book very much. Can’t wait to try the recipes and save some money.

How to title this?? by Candi L. Ross
Ok I just love this book. No only excellent recipes for ice cream but also for cookies. I love the fact that it’s not just some plan boring book with words printed on white paper but it’s colorful and the little cartoons are cute. One thing though?? Where is Caramel Sutra??

Delicious by Arlo Ames
Excellent recipes. We’ve made homemade ice cream off and on for years, and these are far-and-away better than what we’d been using before. Cheap, too. Highly recommended.

Easy to follow, huge variety, extremely informative, amusing illustrations. Perfect! by Bill M.
This is the PERFECT book for anybody who has an ice cream maker. I’d go so far as to say that it’s the only book you need if want to make ice cream at home. This isn’t merely a book on getting the popular Ben & Jerry’s flavors you see in the store, but everything else you’ll ever need to know about ice cream making.

What’s best is that B&J explain all their trials and errors in plain English. They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t, and why. There’s still more than enough room to experiment, but using this book can save you countless hours of quarts-gone-bad.

I bought my first ice cream maker last fall at Sharper Image. Although the machine came with some sample recipes, I wanted to buy some books for some more in-depth ideas. Bruce Weinstein’s “Ultimate Ice Cream Book” was huge, but almost too big, and a little strange to navigate through. But this little Ben & Jerry’s book is excellent.

The first chapter on Ben & Jerry’s history is a fun read, but it’s the second chapter, “Ice Cream Theory”, you’ll definitely want to pay attention to before diving into the recipes. This is an excellent 8 page crash course in ice cream 101. What exactly makes ice cream the way it is? How precisely does heavy cream match up with light cream, whole milk, condensed whole milk, or evaporated milk, and what are the different results from using these? How exactly do sweeteners, eggs, fruit, and salt fit in to the equation? How do you add the stuff like cookies and nuts, or liquor?

The next section gives you three different recipes for “sweet cream” bases, before going on to the individual recipes. Most of the recipes in the book just call for creating one of these sweet cream bases first, then adding whatever else makes the specific flavor you want. It’s set up as one recipie per page. And the ice cream recipes are further broken down into other categories: chocolate variations, sorbets, using fruits or cookies, etc.

In addition to all of that, the book includes recipes for desserts like brownies and cookies, plus recipes for sauce toppings, fried ice cream, and a number of other strange concoctions.

I guess my only complaint would be that the book is 20 years old and could use some updating, namely some more recipes on other B&J flavors that have come and gone since then. Then again, maybe it’s up for us to explore that. Oh yeah, and do get yourself a gym membership! You’re going to need it after using this book.

Similar Products