As a kid, I loved hot fudge sundaes. The only problem was that you had to go to the ice cream parlor to get one. Oh sure, people would try to make them at home using a can of Hershey’s syrup, but the syrup was runny, especially when it was heated. Then, as the ice cream melted, the syrup would dissolve to make very rich (thanks to the ice cream) chocolate milk. This isn’t hot fudge—hot fudge sauce needs to stick to your spoon and refuse to pour at room temperature or colder. Where do you get such a sauce?

The selection of hot fudge sauces you can buy at specialty and gourmet stores has increased only slightly since I was a kid. Meanwhile, your average supermarket generally carries magic shell, Hershey’s syrup, and other national brand sauces. Occasionally you can find an interesting local chocolate sauce in a specialty/gourmet store. I’ve tried a wine-infused cabernet chocolate sauce that was quite good, especially after an afternoon of wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma Valley here in California. Nevertheless, I would generally consider these kinds of hot fudge sauces as experimental; they are only meant to be tried occasionally.

Stick to the basics.
So of course, a couple years ago I tried to dress this recipe up with a more exotic cocoa powder. I had a huge bag of Valrhona cocoa powder (which has a gorgeous reddish hue) left over from making mocha truffles, so it should make a better, more gourmet sauce, right? Well, it wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t what people were expecting. If you tell someone you are giving them hot fudge sauce, it had better taste like hot fudge sauce—no tricks. To accomplish that, you have to stick to basics and that means using good old fashioned Hershey’s cocoa. Don’t even think of using the newer Hershey’s dark cocoa, either. We’re talking childhood memories, remember?

The ingredients in this sauce aren’t ones I think of when making most of my recipes; real chocolate and cream come to mind. But this is nostalgia, so when I recall the large one gallon cans of syrup on the shelves in the back of the ice cream parlor, evaporated milk and corn syrup sound about right. With this recipe, adapted from an old, out of print Hershey’s Cookbook, I think you will find the taste is right, too.

Ingredients for making Hot Fudge Sauce.

Add evaporated milk and corn syrup to saucepan.

Add cocoa and sugar to evaporated milk and corn syrup.

Bring to a boil and stir for 5 minutes over medium high heat.

Turn off heat and blend in butter and vanilla.

Mix well and let sauce cool and thicken 5 – 10 minutes before pouring over ice cream.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Hot Fudge Sauce recipe page.

A big fan of coffee flavor in desserts, I was eager to try the Cinnamon Latte Ice Cream recipe from Ice Cream Ireland. Actually I have been meaning to make any of Kieran’s recipes. Erika at Tummy Treasure even got inspired to make her own recipe for a Cinnamon Gelato. Be sure to check out Ice Cream Ireland for a truly wonderful ice cream experience, recipes, great photos and inspiration.

Cinnamon and espresso are the key ingredients in this recipe, so I was off to get some espresso. In this age of venti caramel machiato nonfat soy half-caff frappuccinos it is pretty rare to see someone just order an espresso at their nearby coffee house. So when I purchased four shots of espresso the barista couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to do with it. I guess you’re not allowed to drink that much by yourself so I appreciated their concern. I neglected to tell them I would be reducing the espresso even further to make it more concentrated, thereby avoiding a Starbucks intervention.

Most recipes I have used that require coffee flavoring call for espresso powder and I was concerned about the effects of simmering on the espresso. Kieran told me that reducing the espresso into syrup helps prevent iciness and that the flavor of the espresso is fine after simmering. I made Kieran’s recipe last week and it was rich, creamy and delicious. My wife commented that it was a little on the sweet side and I concurred with her assessment. Delicious as it was, I wouldn’t want to eat a big bowl of it. Kieran’s recipe post asked for feedback on the recipe so I asked him about options for modifying the sugar to milk and cream ratio and he recommended only making tiny changes. Looking at other ice cream recipes I have made, this definitely has more sugar per volume of cream and milk. Other recipes I use typically have 3/4 cup to 1 cup of sugar for 3 cups of milk/cream/half & half.

So today I decided to go with my gut and increase the total volume of milk and cream to 3 cups—a 25% increase—leaving the sugar at 1 cup (one tablespoon less sugar than in the original recipe). I already felt there was plenty of cinnamon flavor, but increasing the milk and cream would also dilute the espresso flavor, so I boosted the coffee flavor with a teaspoon of espresso powder to make up for any dilution and then some. The resulting ice cream recipe was exactly what I was aiming for: the right amount of sweetness with a slightly stronger coffee flavor to balance the cinnamon. My wife and I eagerly cleaned out the ice cream maker with a spatula after freezing. Delicious.

Ingredients for making Cinnamon Latte Ice Cream.

Reduce 4 shots of espresso over stove.

Heat milk and cream over stove until just simmering.

Beat together egg yolks, sugar and cinnamon until light and fluffy.

After slowly adding hot milk and cream to beaten egg yolks, return to stove and cook until thickened.

Pour mixture through chinois to remove any egg bits or other lumps.

Add cooled espresso syrup and espresso powder to ice cream base and chill in ice bath until colder than 45° F.

Pour chilled mixture into ice cream maker and freeze according to your maker’s instructions.

Once ice cream has finished churning, transfer to dedicated container to ripen in freezer.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Cinnamon Latte Ice Cream recipe page.

Another sorbet recipe??! OK—I promise I’ll lay off sorbets for a while. In fact, expect a chocolate post very soon, but I digress. When I was buying ingredients for raspberry sorbet last week I also picked up some nice mangoes. After a week, they were getting very ripe, so it was time to put them to good use. When I first started making ice creams with regularity in the mid 1990’s, mango sorbet was one of the first sorbets I made. I dug up the recipe again, from the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library book, Ice Creams & Sorbet. Their recipe calls for corn syrup, which has been getting a lot of bad press in the last few years. Check out the Accidental Hedonist’s post about some of the issues around high fructose corn syrup. Although you won’t be able to talk me out of using corn syrup for classic cream caramels, I wanted to find a recipe that didn’t call for any.

What do other people do?
A quick search on the web revealed more than half a dozen recipes that differed mainly in the ratio of sugar to water. The Williams-Sonoma recipe didn’t call for any water—just a little corn syrup—so I was surprised to see other recipes that called for equal parts water and mango puree. All that water made me worry the sorbet would be icy. A few recipes included a little lime or lemon juice as well, which interested me, since I am hooked on liqueurs in sorbets to promote softness and I have plenty of limoncello left.

Putting it all together
I started with 2 cups of mangoes, 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water, with 3 tablespoons of limoncello. The resulting mixture was incredibly thick, so I added another 1/2 cup of water and ended up with equal parts water and sugar after all! I knew the limoncello would help keep the sorbet soft. Speaking of the alcohol, I was worried the limoncello would stand out too much, but you could barely tell it was there. The resulting sorbet was delightful with a rich mango flavor while not too sweet.

Wow, that was pretty quick and easy!
I was surprised at how quickly and easily this mango sorbet recipe came together. Although I strained the mango puree out of habit, it wasn’t necessary and the chinois was left empty. There is also no cooking for this recipe (some recipes called for simple syrup or other sugar syrup reductions) so it is incredibly quick to make since all the ingredients can be dumped into the blender. What took the longest was figuring out how to slice the mangoes because I don’t really eat mangoes much and these were very ripe. Fortunately, Coconut & Lime has a great overview of choosing and cutting a mango.

Ingredients for making Mango Sorbet.

Slice mangoes to remove skin and seed.

Add mangoes, sugar, water and limoncello to blender and purée.

Pour sorbet base into ice cream maker and freeze per your maker’s instructions.

Chill mixture in ice bath until colder than 45° F.

Once sorbet has finished churning, transfer to dedicated container to ripen in freezer.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Mango Sorbet recipe page.

This raspberry sorbet recipe combines fresh raspberries, orange juice, lemon juice and Grand Marnier to create an amazing sorbet you will want to keep all to yourself. Nevertheless, I did make a double batch for a potluck at work several years ago and received many compliments and an empty container.

Each ingredient in this recipe has a job to do. The lemon juice promotes the taste of freshness while the orange juice softens the tartness of the raspberries. To finish it off, the Grand Marnier adds complexity to the finish while keeping the sorbet on the soft side in the freezer. This is definitely the best raspberry sorbet I have ever had.

This recipe is based heavily on the raspberry sorbet recipe from Lou Seibert Pappas’ book, Sorbets and Ice Creams: and Other Frozen Confections. I highly recommend this book; all the recipes have ingredient lists you could count on one hand, with the word “fresh” preceding nearly every ingredient. I have slightly upped the Grand Marnier and substituted Meyer lemons since I like the Grand Marnier to show through just a tiny bit. And as for the Meyer lemons—that’s just the way I roll.

I prefer a silky smooth sorbet so I strain the pulp from the lemon and orange juices, but you could skip this step if you like a little pulp. Removing the seeds from the raspberries is a must—I measured the leftover seeds in the chinois this time and found that 4 cups of raspberries contain just over 1/4 cup of seeds. The next time I make strawberry ice cream I’ll be sure to measure the leftover seeds in the chinois as there were a lot of seeds. I understand that most people use a chinois for soups and sauces, but in the ten years I have owned a chinois it has yet to swallow a savory food. If you don’t have a chinois—which is understandable as they can be a little pricey—you can use a mesh sieve.

I served these with a lemon Loacker wafer, which highlighted the subtle lemon flavor in the sorbet. I tossed in a few raspberries for the photo, but they just got in the way of my spoon as it went in for more sorbet.

Ingredients for making Raspberry Sorbet.

Rinse raspberries in cool water and gently towel dry.

Purée raspberries in blender until smooth, about one minute.

Pour raspberry purée into chinois to remove seeds.

Juice about three oranges to yield 1 cup of orange juice.

Juice about two lemons to yield 1/3 cup of lemon juice.

Add sugar to juices and raspberry purée and mix until well blended.

After chilling in ice bath and adding Grand Marnier, pour mixture into ice cream maker.

Freeze according to your maker’s instructions and then transfer to dedicated container to ripen in freezer.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Raspberry Sorbet recipe page.

The softness of these cookies is a delightful surprise to those that assume they are ginger snaps. These soft cookies have been a hit since I first made them during my senior year in college in 1994. At the time I was looking to expand on the variety of cookies I made and this recipe first caught my eye because it contained dark corn syrup, molasses and milk—three ingredients I had never before used for cookies. In addition to molasses, the flavor of this cookie is derived from ground clove, ginger and cinnamon. The smell of these cookies baking is reminiscent of fall and winter holidays, but I enjoy their great taste year round.

Like any dark cookie dough, determining doneness by browning can be tricky. Other dark cookies will just start to burn and you know you have gone too far, but the key to good molasses softies is: keep them soft. Overcooked, these cookies will be hard, dry and crunchy long before they will actually burn. These cookies bake longer than most cookies and time can vary considerably depending on how large you roll the dough. I’ve rolled them as large as 1 3/4 inches and they cooked for 16 minutes. I’ve been a little more conservative lately and am rolling them 1 1/2 inches in diameter to yield a finished cookie 3 inches wide, which takes about 14 minutes.

For your first time baking these, I’d recommend baking a single cookie first. Once the timer goes off, quickly open the oven door and slice off an edge of the cookie. There should be just a thin layer of dark brown in the middle. If there is a lot, close the door and wait a minute and repeat on another edge, noting the total elapsed time. Once you have the time figured for your oven and dough ball size, stick with that time for subsequent baking runs and roll each ball of dough the same size as. Once removed from the oven, leave them on the cookie sheet for one to two minutes. This will let the cookie firm up a little and finish cooking that thin layer of dark brown, resulting in a pefectly round and chewy cookie.

Ingredients for making Molasses Softies.

Beat butter, sugar and egg until fluffy.

Pour milk, molasses and corn syrup into butter, sugar and egg mixture.

Mix the flour, baking soda, ginger, clove and cinnamon together and slowly add to the dough until incorporated.

Form dough into generous sized ball and roll in sugar to coat.

After baking around 14 minutes in 350° F. oven, let cool on sheets for 1 – 2 minutes.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Molasses Softies recipe page.

I first made this sorbet last week, following the recipe for italian lemon sorbetto in Elsa Petersen-Schepelern’s book, “Gelato, Sorbets and Ice Creams.” To this recipe I added 1/4 cup of limoncello and substituted Meyer lemons to yield a sorbet that simply screamed, “MEYER LEMON!!” Although delicious, the first bite left you with puckered lips. After a few more spoonfuls I got over the initial shock, but would anyone but a citrus fiend be able to handle it?

The taste test
I feared tasters would respond like my daughter, who doesn’t like to admit when she doesn’t like something others do. Sure enough:

“Mmmm, I like it,” she says after tasting it, rubbing her tummy.

I then ask, “Do you want another bite?”

“No,” she replies, shaking her head. With only 1/2 cup of water to dilute the 2 cups of lemon juice, it was no wonder why. I can’t help but wonder how sour the recipe would have been with eureka or other common store-bought lemon varieties. I wanted to make this recipe again with some changes, but I needed more lemons.

Musical chairs with Meyer lemons
Every Tuesday my son and I go to his violin and my viola lesson. We typically arrive a few minutes early and sit outside next to a fabulous Meyer lemon tree while another student (the oldest of whom is half my age) finishes their lesson. This week, in addition to the usual black viola case, I brought a small cooler with a sample of this sorbet for my teacher. Like last week, once our lessons were over, we filled a plastic bag with more than a dozen lemons we picked from the tree. This is the same tree that produces the lemons in the limoncello I used for the sorbet. My teacher makes several gallons of limoncello every year and I have finally found a recipe that could exhaust my supply of limoncello.

The new and improved sorbet
Loaded up with more lemons, I decided I would make another batch of sorbet with some variations aimed at winning over less fanatic lemon lovers. A quick scan of other lemon sorbets in my library and online shows that 2 cups of juice to 1/2 cup of water is on the extreme side. I doubled the water to 1 cup and increased the sugar by 1/4 cup. Since I didn’t want to lose the subtle limoncello flavor, I increase the liqueur from 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Thanks to the alcohol, this sorbet does a great job resisting our frost-free freezer’s attempts to turn it into a block of ice. Even after a week, last week’s batch is still easy to scoop. This new batch of sorbet was slightly less yellow than last week’s batch, but the soft, smooth consistency is the same. The first spoonful doesn’t catch you off guard and you simply want more.

The bottom line
This lemon sorbet recipe is a winner. My daughter even asked for a bowl for dessert. This lemon sorbet tastes great alone but also pairs well with blueberries or strawberries—ever had fresh strawberry lemonade? Delicious! For this week’s presentation, I have been experimenting with the natural, diffuse lighting that comes into my kitchen in the mornings, especially since my light tent seems to suck at capturing subtle yellow hues (also: my hands aren’t really as red as they appear in some pictures!). I liked this picture so much I super-sized it.

Ingredients for making Meyer Lemon Sorbet.

Heat lemon zest, sugar and water over medium heat. Boil for 1 minute and then cool.

A citrus juicer is very handy when you need 2 cups of lemon juice.

Add limoncello to sorbet base and stir. Chill mixture in ice bath before freezing.

Pour sorbet base into ice cream maker and freeze. It will take longer to freeze than typical ice cream.

Sorbet will be a little softer than typical ice creams at this point.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Meyer Lemon Sorbet recipe page.