Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, coffee: Everyone has a favorite flavor of ice cream. As a simple treat on a hot summer afternoon or an elegant finish to a special meal, ice cream is a versatile dessert that is delightfully easy to make at home.

Williams-Sonoma Collection Ice Cream offers more than 40 recipes for rich ice creams, tangy sorbets, and flavorful granitas. When delicious combinations of ingredients -- fresh cream, fruit at its peak of ripeness, fine-quality chocolate -- are combined and frozen in an ice-cream maker, the results are always sublime. From the crunch of ice creams made with candy, cookies, or nuts to those as smooth as caramel, there are plenty of irresistible choices inside these pages. In addition, an entire chapter devoted to more elaborate ice cream dishes will inspire you to use your favorite flavors to make impressive frozen desserts.

Tempting, full-color photographs of each ice cream make it easy to decide which one to prepare, and photographic side notes highlight essential ingredients and techniques, making Ice Cream more than just a fine collection of recipes. A comprehensive basics section and a detailed glossary will also provide you with everything you need to know to make delicious homemade ice cream your new favorite dessert.

From a scoop of creamy, old-fashioned ice cream to a dish of sweet sorbet or a spoonful of rich gelato -- iced desserts are a refreshing way to enjoy an infinite array of wonderful, sweet flavors.

Williams-Sonoma Collection Ice Cream offers more than 40 easy-to-follow recipes that allow you to make all-time favorites as well as delicious new flavors. Whether you crave an irresistibly rich chocolate-hazelnut gelato, a light and tangy lemon sorbet, or the best vanilla ice cream you have ever tasted, the recipes inside will inspire you to serve ice cream for any occasion. This vividly photographed, full-color recipe collection promises to become an essential addition to your kitchen bookshelf.

"Once you have sampled the flavors inside, you will realize that homemade ice cream is simply the best there is!"

Average Customer Review: ( 25 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

I also especially like the fact that the book includes a recipe for peppermint ice cream since that recipe has been hard for me to find.

Overall the recipes work very well, the pictures are beautiful, and the instructions are easy to read. There is quite a selection of recipes in terms of time too. Many of the quick recipes do not involve egg (they involve milk and half&half instead) so they are faster than the others without the potential risk of tasting like scrambled egg if you do them wrong.

68 of 68 found the following review helpful:

Excellent Recipes and Good ReferenceOct 22, 2005
By NuJoi "Create with me"
I have a few of the books in this series. The Ice Cream and Cake books are my favorites. The recipes are outstanding -- well-written and produce great results. The sidebars provide invaluable tips. If you enjoy the science behind cooking -- ala America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated and Alton Brown, you will enjoy the books in this series. WS, unlike Cooks Illustrated, presents just the winning method.

I've used this book more than my Ben and Jerry's book. I've made the vanilla, double chocolate, orange sherbet and carmel ice cream. With the exception of the double chocolate, I've had excellent results. I found the texture of the double chocolate was grainy, but I am not above admitting it could have been my error.

The ice cream basics section is really helpful.


31 of 31 found the following review helpful:

Excellent choiceMay 16, 2006
By Clifford Brown
Having purchased the Kitchen-Aid ice cream attachment it was time to find a solid recipe book to start with. I am very pleased with the other Williams-Sonoma titles in my collection so I was pleased to see they had an Ice Cream book ... I have not been disappointed! Like all of their books, Ice Cream is nicely photographed, and more importantly, very well written. The sidebars included with every recipe provide additional details that are interesting and always helpful. The book takes you beyond the recipes (by the way, the recipes are excellent) to learn the basics of ice cream making. I think experimenting with new ingredients is where the fun is going to be! I have already made the Blueberries & Cream, Raspberry Ice Cream, Orange Sherbert and Lemon Sorbet; all of these turned out great. And ... if you don't have a vanilla bean on hand, the recipe provides you with an alternative measurement for vanilla extract/essence. A great starter book or addition to your ice cream recipe collection.

59 of 66 found the following review helpful:

Good introduction to ice cream makingJul 22, 2006
By Groggie "Groggie"
Pros of this cookbook: The photos are beautiful, and they cover most of the basic recipes here. Another great thing is that while a lot of ice cream recipes in other books I've seen call for corn syrup as a quick, easy-to-use liquid sweetener, none of the recipes in this book do. Instead the Williams-Sonoma recipes use honey, sugar, or simple syrups that you make yourself. I think this is a great thing because, personally, I hate the flavor of corn syrup. This book has more of a natural-foods approach, which I like.

Cons: Most of the ice cream recipes are egg-based. That's not a problem in and of itself, but egg-based recipes tend to be more involved and take longer to make than Philadelphia-style recipes that don't use eggs. So it's nice when ice cream recipe books include a good selection of eggless recipes which are easier to make on the fly. In addition, I made a couple of the recipes and was somehow disappointed with the flavors and textures. Somehow they just weren't as tasty as other recipes I'd tried. Also, the recipes go more for depth than variety - you get a few solid classic recipes, but not a lot of fun variations.

I prefer Bruce Weinstein's "Ultimate Ice Cream Book." While a lot of the sorbet recipes use corn syrup, and there aren't any color pictures, you get a vast array of recipes and variations, including super-easy Philadelphia style recipes. There are so many fun ideas in Weinstein's book that you are more likely to end up playing and experimenting with creating your own recipes. Williams-Sonoma's approach is a lot more regimented and you're more likely to end up just following what their recipes say versus branching out and making up your own.

10 of 10 found the following review helpful:

Great ice cream cookbook!Oct 10, 2007
By E. Mark
William Sonoma cookbooks tend to be strong and this one is no exception. Their recipes prioritize quality over short cuts and convenience and you can taste the difference. The recipes are more labor intensive than some of the basics, but the qualitative difference is worth the extra work. Many recipes are custard based which creates an added step, but results in creamier, richer textures.

See all 25 customer reviews on Amazon.com