I never planned to do an ice cream series. The inaugural post held eight ice cream recipes, which seemed more than enough at the time. But then, by 2023, I’d found six more great ice creams to add to the list. Having already presented fourteen great summer ice cream options, do I really need more ice cream?

I think Dr. Peter Venkman said it best: when someone asks if you need more ice cream, you say yes!

I’ve already presented two ice creams this year. I love the flavor of maple syrup. I included a great maple ice cream from 1942 in the inaugural post in this series as well as one from 1928 in my post on the Frigidaire Recipes cookbook. This year’s Pi Day’s boiled cider pie also included a peanut butter and maple ice cream from Vermont.

In the same vein as the Russian ice cream from last year’s post, but even simpler, that Vermont maple peanut ice cream not only requires no cooking, it doesn’t even fold the cream into syrup. Just whip it all together. Even driving to the store takes more work.

These macadamia snowball cookies are a wonderful—and exotic even today—variation of a great holiday cookie.

For a neat twist, add a tablespoon or two of your favorite jam or jelly to it for a peanut butter and jelly ice cream! And for an even more Vermonty twist than maple syrup, switch out the maple syrup for boiled cider. I first ran across boiled cider in Vrest Orton’s The American Cider Book and can’t stop raving about it. Boiling it is a great way of using up a big jug of apple cider from autumn sales. Bring to a boil, and then simmer very slowly, at least five cups of cider. Keep simmering until it’s down to maple syrup consistency, which will be about one-fifth its volume or weight.

Boil too far, and it will turn completely into syrup and burn. I use a cork trivet on top of my kitchen scale and weigh the pot of boiling syrup to keep track of how far down it’s gone. But as long as you keep an eye on the consistency, you’ll be good. Just remember that different brands of apple cider may have different amounts of water, and so may need to be boiled less or more.

For Easter I posted a candy cane ice cream. It’s yet another great way to use up Christmas candy canes on Easter. Candy cane ice cream is probably not a summer ice cream, but if you have an excess of, say, butterscotch hard candies or those old-fashioned hard candy sticks, consider using them up by making ice cream out of them!

For this year I’m adding three more recipes to the series. As I collect wonderful ice cream recipes, any new recipe has a higher and higher bar to reach before I’ll try it rather than one of the great recipes I already know. The two new ice cream recipes I’m adding today not only reach that bar, they’re from some very unique cookbooks.

I’m also going to expand the scope of this series beyond ice cream to include an Italian sorbet as the third recipe.

One of the coolest cookbooks I discovered at the now-sadly-defunct San Antonio book sale was the 1967 edition of The Hilo Woman’s Club Cook Book from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. There are a lot of great recipes in there, from lotus root pupu to fish in macadamia sauce to coconut waffles. It also has a wonderful mango ice cream contributed by Mrs. Alonzo Gartley, Jr.

Hilo Mango Ice Cream

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 4 hours
Mrs. Alonzo Gartley, Jr.
Review: The Hilo Woman’s Club Cook Book (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

• 2 cups soft ripe mango pulp
• ¾ cup sugar
• juice of one lemon
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp sugar
• ½ tsp almond extract

Steps

1. Mash the mango pulp thoroughly.
2. Add the ¾ cup sugar, the lemon juice, and the salt, and mix well.
3. Freeze for 45-60 minutes.
4. Beat egg whites with the 2 tbsp sugar.
5. Beat the egg yolks and mix well with the meringue.
6. Whip cream until like thick custard but do not over whip.
7. Fold cream into egg mixture.
8. Add frozen mango pulp and mix lightly.
9. Freeze for at least 2-½ hours.

This is another easy ice cream, too. The most intricate part of it is separating the eggs. There’s no cooking the syrup, and the sweetness mostly comes from fresh, ripe, mango. Depending on how sweet you like your ice cream, you could probably drastically reduce the amount of sugar added to the pulp.

Adding almond extract instead of vanilla is also a nice touch, and would work if you decided to use this recipe to make peach ice cream, too.

Which leads me to a nice book I discovered at the Greater St. Louis Book Sale, another installment in Renny Darling’s Joy of Eating series. Great Beginnings and Happy Endings, from 1981, is a collection of snacks, suppers, and desserts. This series is a wonderful example of a forgotten cookbook series. Renny Darling’s books were ubiquitous in the late seventies and early eighties, and they’ve all but disappeared now. If you can find them, especially the first book, The Joy of Eating, I recommend them.

Her Gateau of Fresh Peach Ice Cream is technically an ice cream cake—that’s what “gateau” means—but it has only the thinnest veneer of cookie or graham cracker crust. Three tablespoons of cookie crumbs doesn’t go very far, crust-wise. For all practical purposes it’s an excuse to eat ice cream like it was a cake.

Peach Ice Cream Cake

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Renny Darling
Great Beginnings & Happy Endings (Internet Archive)

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp vanilla wafer crumbs
• 4 peaches, peeled, stoned, and chopped
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 6 egg whites at room temperature
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 cups cream
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp orange liqueur

Steps

1. Spread the 2 tbsp butter onto the bottom and sides of a 10-inch springform pan.
2. Sprinkle buttered pan with crumbs, tilting pan to coat evenly.
3. Store pan in freezer.
4. Cook the peaches, ½ cup sugar, and lemon juice for about fi ve minutes or until sugar completely dissolves.
5. Purée peaches in a processor or blender.
6. Beat egg whites with ½ cup sugar to a stiff meringue.
7. Whip the cream with the 4 tbsp sugar, vanilla, and liqueur to stiff peaks.
8. In a large cold bowl, fold the fruit, egg whites, and cream together until blended.
9. Pour the mixture into the crumb crust and freeze until firm.
10. Cover and store with double thicknesses of plastic wrap and foil.
11. When serving, remove from freezer fifteen minutes early. Serve with whipped cream or preserves.

As you can see in the photos, I didn’t press the plastic wrap close enough to the cake to keep ice crystals from forming across it. This didn’t harm the flavor, only the presentation. Let it rest in the fridge for a bit longer than the 15 minutes called for in the recipe and the ice crystals will mostly melt away.

Better yet, of course, follow the instructions and cover the cake in double thicknesses of plastic wrap and foil before freezing it. I was lazy and cheap, and did not do so. Apparently it makes a difference…

Whipped cream will also hide any ice crystals, although on this ice cream whipped cream is a bit of overkill. Even the original recipe, which initially recommends a “spoonful of whipped cream on top” adds a note at the bottom of the page suggesting peach syrup instead. I think a nice strawberry rhubarb sauce would be very tasty. But then, I think a nice strawberry rhubarb sauce is tasty on just about everything.

You can, of course, substitute just about any fresh fruit in this ice cream cake. Mango and strawberry are likely to be especially nice. Any fruit that would go well with orange liqueur should be great.

And what doesn’t go well with orange liqueur?

Finally, I’m going to branch out a bit this year. I have never been a fan of sorbets. They’re somewhat like upscale snocones, which I’m also not a fan of. But this sorbetto di limone from Campania adds a neat twist that really turns the recipe around. It adds beaten egg white, making this just the right amount closer to an ice cream to make it a great sorbet.

It’s still icy—if you’re susceptible to frozen headaches you won’t want to eat it quickly. But if you’re like me, you will want to eat it and risk the headaches anyway.

Campania Lemon Sorbet

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 4 hours
Review: La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

• 1 lb lemons
• 1-½ cups sugar
• 3 cups water
• 3 egg whites

Steps

1. Zest three of the lemons and reserve.
2. Juice all lemons.
3. Mix sugar, zest, and water in a saucepan.
4. Bring to a boil and simmer for five to six minutes.
5. Cool to room temperature.
6. Strain and stir in the lemon juice.
7. Pour into a cold freezer storage bowl and freeze.
8. Stir vigorously every forty to sixty minutes.
9. When it begins to solidify, beat the egg whites stiff and fold into the syrup.
10. Freeze for four hours or overnight.

For extra elegance, this sorbet looks wonderful served in a small wineglass or tall-stemmed cocktail glass, as in the photo. It’s also especially nice with a spoonful of strawberry rhubarb sauce on top. An old-fashioned cookie that’s not as sweet as modern cookies also offsets the sweetness of the sorbet very well. That’s an Italian walnut cookie in the photo.

So there you have it. Three very nice fruity and creamy frozen desserts for summer 2024. I honestly don’t see how I can continue this series next year, and perhaps I won’t. But it seems that no matter how many ice creams I try, there’s always something new to discover!