You can satisfy a craving for homemade ice cream with many good cookbooks, including The Perfect Scoop and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. But none offer the near-instant gratification and sheer fun plus seriously good recipes of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book.

I declare my ice cream bona fides as a child consumer of N.C. State University’s ice cream—any kid who grows up on that can accurately judge a super scoop. According to the university, students began making ice cream as part of their dairy courses, and in 1973, an ice cream shop opened in the student union. I spent many happy days hanging out in my professor father’s spacious office at State when his childcare services were needed, and I think Dad was happy to have me as an excuse for getting a cone after I’d been well-behaved—either at the union or, by my preteen years, at a stand in D.H. Hill library. (I loved that library and its large section of magazines—not just scholarly ones, but the sorts I wanted to read. Think Seventeen and Cosmo, though I’m not sure now if those were actually there. When I had kids, I took them over once to have a blast trying out all the modernist chairs, including these…and getting ice cream.)

And often the only thing keeping me awake during classical “Friends of the College” concerts in Reynolds Coliseum was the promise of a post-concert scoop. (I still can’t sit still and awake—back then, often in a scratchy dress—through most piano concertos, but that concert series exposed me to some amazing performances I couldn’t sleep through, including my favorite, the Canadian Brass. I recall seeing Itzhak Perlman, Burl Ives, and a Chinese acrobat troupe.)

I got Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield’s book long ago, to accompany my Cuisinart ice cream maker and replicate my favorite flavor, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. My copy now looks splattered and bent, and my machine’s plastic top features a strip of tape following an unfortunate meeting with the kitchen floor. But the ice cream I produce remains, especially for the time and effort needed, deeply satisfying.

Unlike other recipes requiring cooked custards, as many as eight egg yolks, and involved mixtures of starch, cream cheese, and glycerin, Ben and Jerry rely on three supremely simple base recipes, two of which I regularly use.

Most often, I turn to one that requires beating two raw eggs with sugar, then whisking in cream and milk. When I can’t find pasteurized whole eggs for that mixture (they seem permanently discontinued), or when I’m making ice cream on a whim and need to use what I have on hand (and I always have cream on hand), I use their base of light cream and sweetened condensed milk.

No cooking, no chilling time, no leftover egg whites? I’ll scream for that ice cream.

Recipe notes:

To both bases, I’ve made a few adjustments in ingredients and instructions. I almost always add a tablespoon or two of alcohol to keep it a bit softer and easier to scoop. For the condensed milk version, I changed the proportions to use an entire can with a mixture of heavy cream and milk. For the egg version, I loved using pasteurized eggs in the shell to avoid any worry about raw eggs, but lacking those, I’ve turned to recently discovered cartons of pasteurized eggs at Whole Foods. And when I have very fresh, local eggs, I’m comfortable using raw eggs as long as I’m not serving anyone who might be at higher risk—but use your own judgment there.

For the coffee ice cream, I diverged from the book by adding Kahlua and using instant espresso powder. I try to use bagged Heath bar chocolate-covered toffee bits, but their availability is inconsistent at best. Trader Joe’s sells a packaged mix of toffee bars covered in milk chocolate and dark chocolate, and in a pinch I’ll chop some of those.

For a creamsicle-style ice cream, I previously followed Ben & Jerry’s recipe that used frozen orange juice concentrate, and it’s delicious with a hefty balancing dose of vanilla—but it borders on too sweet, and I don’t need the leftover concentrate. So I’ve started using the base recipe spiked simply with pure orange oil (not orange extract; I use this) and, if I’m not serving children, a tablespoon or two of orange liqueur. The orange oil gives it an edge of bitterness and a vaguely tannic mouthfeel, which seems to fade after a day in the freezer.

Once you’ve tried these, you can easily adapt the bases to other flavors. I love using 2 teaspoons peppermint extract plus either about a half cup of crushed Oreos or about 1/3 cup chocolate melted with a teaspoon of coconut oil, drizzled in very slowly as the ice cream finishes churning, for mint chip ice cream, my second-favorite flavor. You can infuse the cream overnight with herbs that you strain out, or try cherry pits—a favorite trick when I pit a lot of cherries for a pie—that you strain out the next day, then add finely chopped fresh or jarred cherries at the end of churning. (Gild the cherry blossom with those chocolate flecks from the mint version.)

Also, I think there’s no better ice cream scoop than this one.

Ice Cream Base #1, adapted from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book

Makes 1 quart

2 large eggs, or the equivalent of pasteurized eggs

149 grams (¾ cup) granulated sugar

454 grams (2 cups) heavy whipping cream

227 grams (1 cup) milk

In a medium bowl, preferably using a hand mixer at medium-high speed, beat or whisk the eggs and sugar together for 2 to 3 minutes, until thick, fluffy, and pale. On low speed or by hand, whisk in the cream and milk until thoroughly blended. To finish the ice cream, whisk in extracts, liqueur, other liquid flavorings, herbs, or spices, then freeze according to ice cream maker instructions. Just as ice cream gets very stiff, slowly churn in any chunky ingredients. Eat immediately as soft-serve, or transfer to a freezer container and freeze for several hours or until firm.

Ice Cream Base #2, adapted from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book

Makes 1 quart

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 ½ cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

In a medium bowl, thoroughly whisk together condensed milk, whole milk, and cream. To finish the ice cream, whisk in extracts, liqueur, other liquid flavorings, herbs, or spices, then freeze according to ice cream maker instructions. Just as ice cream gets very stiff, slowly churn in any chunky ingredients. Eat immediately as soft-serve, or transfer to a freezer container and freeze for several hours or until firm.

Coffee Heath Bar Ice Cream: Dissolve 15 grams (3 tablespoons; you may prefer to start with 2 tablespoons for a milder flavor) instant espresso powder in 1 to 2 tablespoons coffee liqueur (Kahlua or similar), stirring gently; whisk into ice cream base of choice. You may also choose to whisk in 1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract. Churn the base, and when ice cream just gets very stiff, slowly churn in chocolate-covered toffee bits (see recipes notes above). I use about 160 grams toffee bits, but use however much you like (at least half a cup to start). Eat immediately as soft-serve, or transfer to freezer container and freeze for several hours or until firm.

Creamsicle Ice Cream: To the ice cream base of choice, whisk in 1 to 2 tablespoons orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or similar), ½ to ¾ teaspoon orange oil (taste to see if you prefer the stronger amount), and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract. Churn the base until very stiff; eat immediately as soft-serve, or transfer to freezer container and freeze for several hours or until firm.

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Do the words “peanut soup” make you think “Miami”? For many years, the words meant nothing to me. Then I married a man who went to college in Williamsburg, Virginia, and they meant Colonial-ish Thanksgiving appetizer—in the form of a broth-peanut butter-milk mixture, flavored with just a touch of celery and onion. Delicious, but it was pretty much just drinking peanut butter.

A few years later, Steven Raichlen’s Miami Spice came into my life. Subtitled “The New Florida Cuisine,” this 1993 cookbook was hardly where I expected to find a better peanut soup. But a small bowl of his version, amped up with scallions, garlic, ginger, jalapeno, and lime juice, came to define both Thanksgiving and Christmas lunch—and a bigger bowl defined lunch the day after, with my mother’s butterhorn rolls alongside.

Raichlen is better known now for his grilling and barbecue books and TV shows, but this remains my favorite of all he’s published. A self-described Yankee, Raichlen gained his Miami knowledge through a 10-year long-distance relationship with the woman who became his wife.

Rereading Miami Spice in 2024 provides great reminders of how much broader many Americans’ knowledge of “exotic” food has changed in the past few decades. In his drinks recipes, for example, Raichlen highlights the mojito as the “the most famous Cuban cocktail, although it’s ignored by most Anglos and virtually unknown in the States outside of Miami.” His sangria includes starfruit, mango, and atemoya “or other exotic fruit,” plus cinnamon for a flavor-packed drink. I remember falling in love with the beauty of starfruit slices, despite the relative tastelessness of the grocery-store version—tasting fresh-off-the-tree fruit in Costa Rica years later was a revelation.

Another cocktail recipe, of coconut water, rum, and lime juice, explains how to get the coconut water out of the coconut—no buying a box of it back then from your local Trader Joe’s. And the spinach, blood orange, corn, and macadamia nut salad recipe mentions Cara Cara oranges, developed by Florida growers—something else I couldn’t find until years later (at Trader Joe’s, to boot).

Even with our expanded knowledge and tastes, most of these recipes stand the test of time. From a black bean salsa to currant ketchup to Haitian spiced pork to spiced ice cream, Raichlen pulls together flavors that still taste current, giving some due to the cuisines they come from. (In the case of peanut soup, while it’s famously served at King’s Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg, and seemingly based on African groundnut stews brought to the U.S. by enslaved people, it didn’t become a thing til well into the 1800s.)

This is a book that, every year when I pull it out a few days before Thanksgiving to prep a double (or triple!) batch of peanut soup, I wonder where it’s been all year, and vow to come back to it right after Christmas. The flood of other books and newspaper recipes often tugs me away in the new year—my annual loss.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on the title above.

Peanut Soup

Adapted from Miami Spice

My notes:

This is Raichlen’s ingredient list, but I’ve left out his fried leek topping, and revised some of the directions to reflect what I do. I’ve never made the leeks, and never felt we were missing anything, since the recipe was already so much more complex than what we had been eating. If you want some quick extra crunch and flavor on top, try store-bought fried shallots or onions. Or make the fried leeks: Just slice a couple of well-washed and dried leeks into toothpick-thin slivers and fry in an inch or two of 350-degree oil for a minute; drain on paper towels and sprinkle lightly with salt.

In the soup, I always use the full amount of lime juice, and usually skip the fresh chili, adding a few pinches of red pepper flakes instead. I like it even more when made and chilled a day or two ahead, to further blend the flavors.

Serves 6 to 8

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

4 scallions, trimmed and finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 to 3 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

½ scotch bonnet or 1 jalapeño chili, seeded and minced

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

About 3 cups chicken stock

3 cups milk

2 cups chunky peanut butter

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, divided

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, scallions, garlic, ginger, and chili, and cook until soft and lightly golden, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat.

Whisk in the chicken stock and bring to a boil, then whisk in milk, peanut butter, parsley (if you prefer, hold back a bit of parsley for garnishing the soup), a tablespoon of lime juice, and about a half-teaspoon of pepper. Whisking often, gently simmer the soup, uncovered, for 10 minutes, until creamy and well-flavored. Taste it for seasoning, and add a touch of salt if needed, more pepper, and/or more lime juice. If the soup is too thick, add a little more stock or water.

Sometimes, it’s just one recipe.

Jean Anderson compiled 200 recipes for A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Recollections. Many were little-known but much-loved specialties of small communities—such as Surry County Sonker, from a small part of North Carolina’s Piedmont foothills—a fairly standard, pie pastry-based fruit cobbler with a terrific name. Reading Anderson’s book should make even the most devoted Yankee long to sink teeth into Southern fried okra or brown sugar pie (Anderson traces her lifelong love of Southern cooking to this pie, served to her five-year-old self in the basement cafeteria at Raleigh, N.C.’s Fred Olds Elementary).

But for all the gems I know the book holds, I rarely open it outside of the middle of September. Because that is when, at the state farmers market in Raleigh, summer squashes and fall apples start competing for space. And that means it’s time for Blue Ridge Relish.

How I first found this recipe, I have no idea—presumably from the library’s new books shelf around the time of its publication in 2007, since I’m always a sucker for great Southern recipes. Born and raised in Raleigh, I nevertheless have nary a drop of Southern blood, with a mother from Connecticut and a father from Nebraska. I like some New England foods, and many Midwestern recipes, but to my palate, none beat the vast repertoire of the South.

The idea of putting the relish on hot dogs and hamburgers, yes, but also a bowl of pinto beans appealed to me; I love a good bowl of beans or field peas but find I rarely make them as tasty as those in good meat-and-three restaurants. And at that point in our lives, with two small children, we went often to Bon’s restaurant—run by the daughter of the famed “Mama Dip”—for veggie plates (where mac and cheese counts as a veggie). My plate always included a bowl of creamy, porky black-eyed peas, pintos, or Dixie Lees (Bon was, I think, vegetarian or maybe vegan, but she still knew how those peas should taste). So if I could up my game with a topping of a vinegary mix of peppers, onions, and apples—well, time to copy a recipe.

Attributed to Nannie Grace Dishman of the unincorporated Sugar Grove, North Carolina, it produces 10 to 12 pints of relish from about four pounds each peppers and apples, two pounds onions, cider vinegar, sugar, and pickling salt. That’s it. No fancy spices or seeds, no supreme crunch; you get just slightly soft, sweetly tangy vegetables mixed with basic Golden Delicious apples. Twelve pints feels like a lot coming out of the canner, but they’ll barely hold a stomach til the next September.

In the photo albums I used for years to hold clipped and copied recipes, I had this recipe without its full source, and it took several years to connect it to Anderson’s book. I found a used copy for sale and discovered all else it held. Anderson, who is in the James Beard Hall of Fame, also adored Southern food as an outsider born in Raleigh to Yankee parents. She traveled widely, and wherever she wandered seemed to persuade all she met to share their recipes. And she didn’t just love Southern food; her writing included the 1,300-page, award-winning Doubleday Cookbook, and books on the food of Portugal and Germany. She lived to 93, dying in 2023—four years after publishing her final book that connected Southern potters to recipes made or served in their creations.

From the farm where I pick blueberries and blackberries, an email came this week with news of a sudden glut of summer apples. A little later, emails will come with the much-anticipated sign-up to pick up paper containers of fresh figs, and once again, the canning pot will start to bubble over jars of relish and lemony fig jam—steaming the kitchen but forecasting an end to summer’s oppressive heat, and with it time to renew my love affair with Anderson’s books.

Blue Ridge Sweet Red Pepper Relish

Slightly adapted from A Love Affair with Southern Cooking

My notes:

Chop the vegetables as large or small as you prefer. I usually use a straightforward yellow onion, but mixing in some Vidalias would not be a bad idea.

I rarely use the Golden Delicious apples Anderson calls for, preferring to select something slightly more tart that will soften but hold their shape. These change most every year, depending on what the farmstand recommends. Pink Lady, Jonagold, McIntosh, and Mutsu have all had their turn in the canner.

If you hate the thought of canning, these could just get stored in the fridge—but I’d cut the recipe in half in that case. Note that these are best if not opened for several weeks after canning.

Makes 10 to 12 pints

4 1/2 pounds (about 12 large) red bell peppers, cored, seeded, and chopped into ½-inch pieces

2 pounds (about 12 very small) yellow onions, chopped into ½-inch pieces

4 pounds (about 12 small) Golden Delicious apples, cored, peeled, and chopped into ½-inch pieces

3 quarts boiling water

2 ½ cups cider vinegar

2 ½ cups cold water

2 ½ cups granulated sugar

4 teaspoons (1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon) pickling salt

Put peppers, onions, and apples in a large pot and add just enough boiling water to cover them. Let stand, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Drain well and return to the pot.

Meanwhile, wash and rinse 12 pint jars and their tops and rings. I boil the jars in the canner as it comes to temperature and keep the tops and rings hot in a small pot of water kept below a simmer.*

In another saucepan, bring the vinegar, cold water, sugar, and pickling salt to a boil. Reduce heat to low and stir until the sugar dissolves completely, then simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

Pour vinegar mixture over the pepper mixture and bring to a full rolling boil. Remove from the heat.

Using a funnel and jar-lifting tool (or, in a crunch, regular tongs), lift and drain the jars back into the canner; put the jars on a towel on the counter next to the peppers. Ladle the hot relish in, leaving ¼ inch of headspace at the top of each. Run a thin rubber spatula or plastic knife (metal is OK but the others are preferred) around the inside perimeter of the jars to release trapped air bubbles. Use a wet paper towel to wipe off the rims, then top with lids and rings, screwing the rings on until just finger-tight (do not screw them on too firmly).

Return the jars to the canner, bring to a full boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Lift the jars out onto a towel to cool completely. Check the lids for a seal before storing. Store on a dark shelf for several weeks before opening.

*If you rarely can, remember a few things:

—You can use any tall pot that has enough space to cover the jars well with water—they should always be covered by at least an inch of water. If you don’t have a rack for the bottom, put a tea towel under the jars.

—Never put a hot jar, empty or full, straight onto a counter; protect the jars from cracking by putting them on a towel.

—Don’t screw the rings on too tight—just “finger-tight.”

—If you like, let the jars stand in the hot water after turning the heat off for 5 minutes before removing them—this can help avoid any bubbling-out if you didn’t leave enough headspace. (With jams, this also helps avoid all the fruit floating to the top.)

—Before storing, tighten the rings if needed and check the seals by pressing on the lid. If it depresses/pops back up at all, it’s not sealed and should be stored in the refrigerator.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on the title above.