Popsicles (known here as artikim) are a national obsession, delivering a refreshing blast chill when the temperatures spike from hot to hades. From the cheap, delicious, artificially flavored ices you can buy along the beach to Mexican-style paletas, which come in a million gourmet flavors, it’s easy to get a frozen/sweet fix on a stick. To show off the gorgeous fruit in season, I based these pops around thick, juicy slices of figs. I slide them into popsicle molds, then tip a tart, honey-sweetened yogurt mixture around them before freezing. If you can, try to arrange your pops so the figs remain visible (see instructions in recipe), but no matter how you build them, they’re delicious. The tahini magic shell really is two-ingredient heaven; dip once and you’ve got a semi-translucent sesame slick that hardens on contact with the pops; dip twice for a thicker layer. I make a generous amount of the magic shell because it makes dipping the pops easier; you can refrigerate any leftover shell, then gently rewarm it in the microwave. If you want to halve it, you’ll just have to tip and swirl the pops around to coat them.
Our well-proportioned sandwiches feature relatively small, thin cookies and precise scoops of ice cream that give each bite the perfect combination of textures and flavors. We added water to the dough to prevent the cookies from turning rock-hard in the freezer, as well as plenty of browned butter, dark brown sugar, vanilla, and salt to compensate for the flavor-dulling effect of the freezer. Mini chocolate chips provided bursts of chocolate flavor and delicately crunchy texture.
Summer brings long days of sunshine and with it a great excuse to concoct frozen treats. This month’s sweet recipe does just that, with a focus on the ice cream fanatics among us. It comes from Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook by the folks from the eponymously named ice cream shop. Their flavors are amazing, and this recipe for Strawberry Honey Balsamic Ice Cream with Black Pepper blends into wonderful layers of rich sweetness with a touch of acidic tang and peppery spice.
When we conceived Goldie Falafel, instead of thinking of falafel as an ethnic specialty, we wanted to present it as a vegan alternative to saturated-fat-laden hamburgers, but still wrapped in the flag of the great American fast-food joint. Falafel and French fries—which are often stuffed into pita along with the falafel—were the easy part, since both are naturally vegan and fundamentally delicious.
Baked goods do something peculiar when boiled with milk: they dissolve and become stretchy and elastic. Throw the mixture into a blender, and this strange concoction becomes velvety and thick, like pudding. I first encountered this magic trick at a restaurant full of them, called Alinea. There, a pudding made by boiling brioche and cream was served with raspberries for an elegant “toast-and-jam” bite. Since then, I’ve applied the same principle to just about every other kind of bakery treat I can get my hands on—like gingerbread or devil’s food cake. Most recently, I’ve been reducing glazed donuts to a velvety pudding to flavor ice cream.
Combine the pawpaw and sugar. Stir in the cream and milk. Pour mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according the manufacturer’s directions.
This is my full-stop favorite ice cream.
You can never have enough chocolate, so we’ve also included an egg-based chocolate ice cream recipe for you.
Bryan won’t stand for untweaked chocolate—it has to be smoky, or spicy, or salty—so for this particular recipe, we went spicy.
The honey in this recipe offers a two-fer -- not only does its ambrosial sweetness play beautifully with fragrant melon and fresh mint, it also keeps the puree from freezing solid, making it easier to scrape the granita into a gorgeous, fluffy pile of sweet snow, even in the middle of summer.