Frozen Desserts: The definitive guide to making ice creams, ices, sorbets, gelati, and other frozen delights (Paperback)

~ (Author), Robin Weir (Author) "Most books are full of myths about the history of ice cream..." (more)
Key Phrases: overheated custard, perfect granita, plastic freezer boxes, French Vanilla Ice Cream, Imperial One, Tbsp Makes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Moderately priced machines for making ice cream have made the pleasure of homemade frozen desserts accessible to everyone. Once you've used one of these gizmos, Frozen Desserts by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir may be your next step. Giddy as a dish of super-premium ice cream can make you feel, Liddell and Weir take their subject seriously. Their book opens with a comprehensive and fascinating history, starting with the first recorded appearances of frozen desserts during the Tang Dynasty in China. The sections on ingredients and equipment are thorough. Among the more than 200 recipes, you will find nine for vanilla ice cream, a truly drop-dead chocolate ice cream, and Rocky Road. There are also a host of less orthodox offerings, including Bellini Sorbet, Gin and Tonic Sherbet, and Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Peanut Brittle.

Product Description

The most thorough, comprehensive, and authoritive book on making ice cream, sorbets, gelati, parfaits, and granitas, served with a generous and delightfully entertaining history of frozen desserts.

Combine one part nostalgia, a dash of history, a level teaspoon of advice on equipment, ingredients, terms, and techniques, plus a generous helping of more than 200 recipes, and you have the makings of this loving, dazzling tribute to frozen desserts.

Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir have spent eight years in passionate pursuit of everything ice cream. After tracing its evolution across every continent, poring through stacks of background literature, and studing its chemistry, they colelcted, developed, and meticulously perfected dozens of recipes using nine ice-cream makers, then made sure each recipe could also be created in the kitchen without an ice-cream maker.

Their excellent and totally reliable reciples range from the familiar to the exotic, and represent the best French, Italian, Asian, Middle Eastern, and American interpretations of the dessert no one can get enough of. The majority of recipe are original, but classic favorites are included too, for those who like their chocolate and vanilla pure, simple and creamy cold. With such frozen adventures as Green Tea Ice Cream, Tequila Granita, Basil Flavored Lemon Sorbet, and Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream to choose from, you'll find the perfect grace note for every occasion as well as the classic "sides"--such as oven-baked wafer cones, crisp almond cookies, and decadent butterscotch and chocolate fudge sauces--that are indispensable for proper ice cream enjoyment.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (July 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312143435
• ISBN-13: 978-0312143435
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #166,767 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent techniques for refining homemade icream, December 1, 1998

By	Jeffrey Harris "Jeff Harris" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought "Frozen Deserts" a few weeks after a friend gave me an electric ice-cream maker for my birthday. The first batches, made from recipes in my otherwise dependable fanciest cookbooks, had been disappointing and I was desperate for help. The Liddel and Weir book taught me techniques that improved the results. I now can make first rate frozen desserts, sorbet and gellato even from less detailed recipes found in other cookbooks.

Liddel and Weir's strength is the detailed techniques using only simple fresh ingredients. Those techniques, along with the recipe for Italian strawberry gelato with balsamic vinegar are worth the small price of the book.

--One warning on taste: US cooks may want to substitute freshly squeezed juice and candied citrus rind for cooked juice and raw citrus peel that the authors use for lemon and grapefruit sorbets.--

Indulge yourself in their many recipes for chocolate ice-cream and vanilla ice-cream. They are rich, smooth, custardy and delicious. This cookbook is a must for anyone serious about learning to make gourmet quality homemade ice-cream.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Recipes, Useful Theory and Tools, July 28, 2000

By A Customer

This is a fabulous book for the beginner who not only wants an excellent set of recipes for all sorts of ice creams, but who also wants useful theory, helpful cooking charts, notes about equipment, and even cross-cultural history. For example, if you want to start experimenting with flavors that are not listed in the book, you can learn enough with the authors' excellent explanation of the chemistry of ice cream and their useful chart/formula for calculating necessary proportions of ingredients so that your newest experiment doesn't turn to mush after 5 minutes out of the freezer. Or maybe you want to really understand the difference between Italian Gelato and Premium Ice Cream so that you can take your favorite Ice Cream recipe and be able to improvise and make Gelato with the same flavors (hint: the difference has to do with milk-cream ratio and the resulting amount of air). If you like to have expertise about ice cream (and not just the recipes themselves) this is a perfect book for you.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For All Ice Cream Geeks, January 2, 2002

By	A. C. Johnson (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book may lack the close up food photos which are de rigeur in most cook books these days, but it more than makes up for this by including thoroughly researched technically accurate ice cream recipes.
The authors are almost chemists in their attention to such details as the difference between using a 35% cream and a 40% cream. There are formulas in this book to help you make your own flavors and even one formula to help you figure out how much alcohol to put in an ice cream if you want it to be able to freeze.
There are plenty of old stand-bys like chocolate and french vanilla, but there are also some very compelling flavors such as Rhubarb sorbet and rosepetal ice cream. I agree that this book is written for a UK audience, but that is a VERY minor quibble and doesn't actually effect the usefulness of the book.
Included is a very interesting, well researched history of ice cream that debunks several popular myths and includes some information about how people made ice in the 16th century.
Overall, this is an incredible book and using it I feel like I am equipped with all the information I need in order to make the highest quality ice cream possible.