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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully creative but overcomplicated and not easily indexed,
By
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This review is from: A Passion for Ice Cream: 95 Recipes for Fabulous Desserts (Hardcover)
The book had so much promise, but I find it to be disappointing in several ways, alas. The recipes I've tried have been delicious, and the instructions accompanying those recipes are fairly clear and authoritative, although the discussions and instructions don't rise to the level of a cooking teaching tool, as would, for example, anything by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Jacques Pepin, or any of the King Arthur Flour baking cookbooks, all of which really teach one new skills while providing wonderful recipes. In this case, I was already pretty experienced at making ice cream before I bought the book. Were I a tyro, I don't think this book would be the best introduction, although of course there is nothing like plunging in and trying.
My biggest disappointment, though, is the organization of the book: ice cream recipes are "bundled" with their accompanying cookies, garnishes, and the like; instead of a group of recipes for chocolate ice cream, for example, we have a group of recipes for ice cream sandwiches, with ice cream of any of several different flavor families. One has to dig around in the index at the back of the book to find, say, recipes for chocolate ice cream. I would much prefer to have an index or table of ice cream recipes, by flavor and page number, right up front -- I don't want to spend so much time looking for the flavor I want. My next disappointment is that the text is printed in a graphically attractive and most stylish but virtually illegible size and color. My middle-aged eyes struggle desperately to read the book, even with my reading glasses on, and I surely can't prop the book 18-20" back from my utensils, to read as I work without changing position, as I like to do with my cookbooks. This is a case in which the author and editorial team seemed to have chosen (admittedly very attractive) style over function. The book IS very attractive, and the photographs are lovely -- but I would gladly sacrifice some beauty in favor of being able to read the recipes and discussions more easily. My final disappointment is in the complexity and elaborateness of most of the "dessert packages," for lack of a better word. Making the ice cream or sorbet and its accoutrements is, in most cases, a tremendously labor-intensive exercise. I have opted for using some of the creative and delicious ice cream recipes and figuring out my own much simpler and easier garnishes and accompaniments. I work a demanding job and have a house to run. I love to cook, but can't devote as much time to making an ice cream sandwich, for example, as these recipes require. So I use less of the book than I'd wish. Over all, Ms. Luchetti's sense of style and taste are impressive, and she seems superbly knowledgeable about frozen desserts. And many of the ice cream recipes are lovely. But I had hoped that this would be a book I would pull from the shelf much more often than I will, in fact, because the book is so difficult to use.
44 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hardly A Passion Compendium,
By
This review is from: A Passion for Ice Cream: 95 Recipes for Fabulous Desserts (Hardcover)
Early on in the introduction pages the author blows off Gelato, "I'll leave it to the Italians". She mostly ignores custdard based ice creams to concentrate on "American Ice Cream", spell that Philadelphia style ice cream. Well, okay. to each their own. Then she includes recipies for cookies, cakes, etc., which have nothing to do with my ice cream maker.
I think ice cream lovers are better off buying the Williams-Sonoma book. If you want a reprise on the old Cooks Ilustrated ice cream book look into the latest Cooks Illustrated Best Recipies book. It has a great synopsis of their original book, it is far less expensive than the $99 used book sellers are asking for the original on Amazon and offers some great food recipies as well. James Droste Texas
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious frozen desserts,
By H. Grove "Errant Dreams Reviews" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: A Passion for Ice Cream: 95 Recipes for Fabulous Desserts (Hardcover)
"A Passion for Ice Cream" is not simply a book of recipes for ice cream itself, although it might be easy to mistake it for that from the title alone. Instead it's book of ice cream desserts (and other frozen desserts). For instance, you'll find caramelized apple and butter pecan ice cream sundaes, chocolate-covered-pretzel ice cream ball fondue, chocolate-coated cocoa nib florentines and orange ice-cream sandwiches, black mission fig and raspberry parfaits, chocolate banana baked Alaskas, mango soup with coconut sherbet and strawberry sorbet, and warm blueberry filo stacks with Grand Marnier ice cream. As you can see, these aren't simple "mix, put it in the ice cream maker, and forget it" recipes. This is not a negative--sometimes it's a ton of fun to make such elaborate and beautiful desserts--but you should know what you're getting yourself into before you decide to buy this book.
When it comes to actual performance, the recipes exhibited the quality of testing I'm accustomed to from Chronicle Books. I never found a confusing set of directions or obvious error. Two of the recipes from this book found immediate places in our stable of favorites--the brown sugar ice cream in its chocolate cake roulade (with warm coffee caramel sauce!) is a bit messy, but so incredibly delicious that no one will care. The white chocolate ice cream (destined to float in espresso according to the recipe, but I enjoy it plain, or in coffee or hot chocolate...) is one of the best white chocolate ice creams I've ever had. The only sour note was a Cafe Viennese frozen yogurt shake; it was so tart we had to add sweetened cocoa powder in noticeable quantities to make it enjoyable. And while it's good enough that we finished it, I don't think we'd make it again. Ultimately, while you'll want to make sure you're up to the kind of in-depth recipes in this book before buying it, it's a high-quality cookbook that produces delicious results. I look forward to making yet more recipes out of it!
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