Do you own an Amazon Kindle Are you looking for some good cookbooks or food related books to purchase for your Amazon Kindle? If you have one it is a great way to rid your kitchen of the clutter of piles and piles of cookbooks. Some people think it can become a must have “kitchen appliance” like a toaster or a food processor. Below is list of some of the best books that I recommend that you can currently buy the Kindle version. Clicking on the title of book will bring you to it’s Amazon Kindle page.

1. How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table

This is a wonderful guide on how to choose fruits and vegetables to get the best quality. Find the history of each item, from apples to peaches to green beans. Also find out where these things are grown. The best part of the book is that you learn why certain types of produce are found in today’s supermarket.

2. I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0

This is THE book for learning how to cook written by Alton Brown of Good Eats fame. It goes through every type of cooking from grilling to roasting. It also include many great recipes and tips.

3. BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes

This is THE book for learning how to bake. It containing many fabulous recipes, and each one the author explains why she is using certain ingredients. The science behind each recipe is explained, so that you know what is really happening in your oven.

4. Home Cheese Making

Want to learn to make your own cheese? This is the source for all things cheese making related. Tons of recipes are included from easy ricotta to more difficult cheddar.

5. The Ultimate Brownie Book: Thousands of Ways to Make America’s Favorite Treat, including Blondies, Frostings, and Doctored Brownie Mixes

Are you a brownie lover? Then this is the book for you. This book will keep you busy turning our different variations on this chocolate treat. It’s good for both those who love cakey brownies and those who love fudgy brownies.

6. The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas,

This book contains a ton of ice cream, sorbet, and granita recipes. It’s not my favorite for explanation, but it’s great just for the wide range of recipes.

7. Making Artisan Gelato: 45 Recipes and Techniques for Crafting Flavor-Infused Gelato and Sorbet at Home

Want to make your own gelato? Then this is the book you need. The author provides tips and tricks to help turn whatever fruit, nut, or other flavoring into a sweet, cold delight.

8. Bob’s Red Mill Baking Book

Bob’s Red Mill is known for making some of the highest quality whole grain products on the market. I regularly use their corn meal. This book contains recipes to make some of the best and healthy baked goods and breads you have ever turned out.

This afternoon, I got a chance to attend Zingerman’s Creamery Gelato Kickoff. It was their way of welcoming the summer season with their new summer flavors. They were offering free scoops of gelato to anyone in the shop. My wife tried the dark chocolate, my daughter had the blueberry sorbet, and I had the Luciano’s Lemon, which had a nice lemon flavor without being too tart, very good. They were also sampling their brand new Maple Bacon gelato, which I have to say is the strangest flavor I have ever seen. Never did I think, hey you know what this gelato needs, some pieces of bacon, but it turned out much better than I thought it would. The maple flavor of the gelato itself was excellent. As for the bacon it was different because it was candy-coated and didn’t have the crispiness you expect in bacon. My wife thought it was too chewy for her liking. Zingerman’s is having an event called Camp Bacon, which is what inspired this gelato flavor.

After the free samples, I got to watch a demonstration on how their gelato maker Josh, churns out tasty treats. He made vanilla gelato, and everyone got to sample it fresh out of the machine. He uses vanilla bean paste from Madagascar, which is the same location I get my vanilla bean paste from.

Overall it was a nice way to break up the day and cool off on a muggy June day. Thanks Zingerman’s for putting on this free event and keep churning out quality products.

Lemon and strawberry make a great combination. Strawberry lemonade is a great treat to have on a warm summer day. I wanted to capture that same flavor in the form of ice cream, so I came up with this recipe for a lemon ice cream featuring a strawberry swirl. Try to buy the most fresh strawberries that you can get. This is a custard based ice cream, so if you don’t know how to make a custard based ice cream, read my instructions on how to do so.

Ingredients for Lemon Ice Cream
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup half & half
pint of fine salt

Ingredients for Strawberry Swirl
1/4 cup + 1 pint of strawberries

Prepare the eggs, sugar, and dairy as according to my instructions on how to make custard based ice creams. Add the lemon juice once the mixture has had about a half hour to cool. Then place into the fridge for at least 2 hours to fully chill.

For the strawberry swirl: cut up your strawberries and pour 1/4 cup of sugar over them. Let it sit for a half hour. Then using a blender, puree the strawberries. Place your pureed strawberries into the fridge to thoroughly chill.

When your ice cream mixture is fully chilled, pour the mixture into your ice cream maker according to the instructions of your model. About 2-3 minutes, before your ice cream is done, slowly introduction your pureed strawberries. Turn off the ice cream maker, and pour your ice cream into your favorite container and place in the freezer to fully harden before enjoying.

This is a recipe review, which means this is a recipe that I did not personally come up with, but that I tried out and am giving my opinion on how the recipe turned out. For legal reasons I cannot post these recipes, but I can tell you where you can get them yourself.

Recently, I did a post on the King of Spices – the Peppercorn. One of my goals has been to come up with something on the website for each different type. While reading through the book “Making Artisan Gelato” by Torrance Kopfer, I found a recipe for Pink Peppercorn gelato. I never dreamed of using them to make a dessert. If you have read my post on the peppercorn, you would know that the pink peppercorn is first off not a true peppercorn and secondly, it is a berry. So even thought it smells like a peppercorn when you crack it, the taste is more berry like. It reminds of lingonberries (which you can get at IKEA stores), but without the tartness.

So I got all my ingredients together, and made the gelato. You can get the full recipe in the Making Artisan Gelato book, which is available on Amazon or check your local library. Here are my notes describing my experience with this recipe.

1. Make sure you crush your peppercorns good. I found that the flavor when it was ready to go in the fridge wasn’t strong enough. You want almost too strong of a flavor before churning it. I allowed some peppercorns to remain in the mixture until I was ready to churn, and then I strain them all out.

2. My mixture was off-white when it was ready to go into the fridge. So I decided to add just a bit of red food coloring to make the color a little pink. It doesn’t affect the flavor, but I think if something looks better to our eyes, we can trick our tongues into thinking it tastes better.

3. I used a Cuisinart ice cream maker for this gelato.

4. I ate mine fresh out of the machine when it was done. I think if you are going to make gelato at home, then it’s at it’s best right out of the machine. When I make ice cream, I put that in the freezer to harden for a couple hours. If you don’t know the difference between ice cream and gelato, check out the earlier post explaining it. My leftovers ended up in the freezer.

5. I didn’t use any vanilla extract as I was all out. Also, I think in some ice cream/gelato flavors that I have made the vanilla overpowered the flavor it was suppose to be.

Overall, I think this is a good recipe. The flavor was good and unique. I am sure your guests would be intrigued to try this. The recipe was easy to follow, especially for someone who has been making ice cream for a while now.

Recipe Grade: B+

This is part of a series of posts on grocery stores that I have been to and would recommend to those that live in the area to check them out.

Zingerman’s has been the standard for great tasting food in Ann Arbor since 1982. In more recent years, they have opened up a creamery where all their cheese and gelato is made. At the front of the creamery there is a cheese shop, where you can buy all sorts of cheese (including goat cheese and cream cheese), a kit for making your own mozzarella at home, books, salami, and best of all the gelato! They have several flavors on hand, freshly made in the same building! Be forewarned, all their food is really tasty, but it isn’t for the cheap skate. When you use better, more expensive ingredients, you end up with a quality product that costs more than you would pay at the super market. But don’t worry, there are daily and monthly specials you can take advantage of that will keep some of your hard earned money in your pocket.

You can also tour the creamery for a mere five dollars. Click here to read my experience at the tour. Click here if you want to learn more about the creamery itself and what specials they are offering.

Yesterday I got the privilege of touring the Zingerman’s Creamery in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The tour is a great deal and a lot of fun. The tour costs $5 per person, but you get a coupon for $5 off a purchase of anything in the store. The tours are every Sunday at 2pm. But if you arrive early you get to do some sampling. We got to try some gelato and a selection of premier cheese, including a Great Lakes Cheshire cheese that they make from raw cow’s milk (it’s delicious, but pricey at $26.99 per pound). When the tour began, we headed into the back room, where someone was working on a batch of goat cheese. Our tour guide gave us a little background on the creamery. And then proceeded to make a batch of fresh mozzarella for us. The cheese was already in curd form, so all he had to do, is melt the cheese with hot water, stretch it out, form it into a ball, and place it into a brine. While the cheese was taking it’s salt water bath, he went over to the gelato/sorbet machine to make a batch of cherry chocolate chip sorbet. The cherry was made from tart cherries from Traverse City, Michigan. As he made the batch, he explained the difference between gelato and ice cream as well as telling us an interesting story where he buys his vanilla extract and how one year it skyrocketed to over $200 for a gallon! When the sorbet finished we got to sample as much as we liked (no double dipping though!)

The tour last about an hour and I enjoyed every second of it. I would highly recommend this to anyone that is interested in either cheese or gelato and finds themselves in the Ann Arbor area. It is an experience for the taste buds and as well as a treat for your brain with all the new knowledge you will pick up. For more information on the tour and the creamery visit: http://www.zingermanscreamery.com/

When I first bought my ice cream maker, this is one of the first books I checked out at my local library. “The Ice Cream And Frozen Yogurt Cookbook” by Mable & Gar Hoffman is a collection of more than 220 recipes that include ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbets, sherbets, granita, and gelato. The book is divided into sections based on the type of flavor. There are sections on vanilla, chocolate, citrus fruits, tropical fruits, etc. The book is good for getting a lot of recipes. I personally think there are other books on the market that do a better job of teaching the hows and whys of ice cream (in an earlier post I explained how to make custard based ice cream).  For those on a diet, each recipe includes an estimate of how many calories, how much fat, etc is in 1 serving of each dessert.

Well it may not be the go-to how to make ice cream book, it is still a good book to have just for the amount and variety of recipes.

Vanilla is one of the best flavorings around. It is used in sorts of delicious treats – brownies, cookies, and of course ice cream to just name a few. Vanilla extract is widely available to add vanilla flavoring, but it’s not as good as the fresh stuff you get from the vanilla bean itself. Problem is vanilla beans aren’t cheap. About a year ago I found an in between that came me more of the vanilla bean flavor with closer to the extract cost. The in between is vanilla bean paste from the company Lorann. It comes in a 4 oz container. 1 tablespoon of the paste is equal to 1 vanilla bean or 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract. Whenever I make vanilla ice cream this is what I use to flavor it. I like how you get little pieces of vanilla in the ice cream. I have gotten several batches of delicious vanilla ice cream from this container. I haven’t used it in anything else yet so if anyone out there has, feel free to leave a comment about your experience.

Several years ago while in Southern California, I got to taste the Italian treat known as gelato. So of course when I first got an ice cream maker, I wanted to make my own gelato. But so far I haven’t been able to make anything that matches what I had those many years ago. For Christmas, my sister in law, gave me this book: Making Artisan Gelato by Torrance Kopper. The book includes techniques on how to make the best gelato you can at home. The author knows that you can’t replicate what is made in gelato shops at home, since those machines can churn gelato faster and at great quantities by far, than anything you could do in your own kitchen. So the author focuses in on how you can make the best homemade gelato possible, giving you all the tips and techniques you need. Torrance does a through job of covering all the ingredients, why you need them, and what is it important to have the proper ratio of ingredients. The book includes 45 recipes, that also includes sorbet recipes. I haven’t gotten to try any out yet but am excited to do so. I would recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed a tasty treat in a gelato shop and wishes to make something similar at home.

Peppermint is one of the classic flavors of Christmas time. What better way to enjoy that flavor then in ice cream. Even better if it’s chocolate ice cream. Below you will find my recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Ice Cream. It uses a combination of peppermint extract and broken up candy canes to bring you that minty flavor.

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup cocoa powder (look for Dutch-processed)

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

mini candy canes

Follow my instructions on how to prepare custard-based ice cream. Make sure you add the cocoa powder with the sugar and eggs.

For the mini candy canes, break them up into small pieces and put them into the ice cream about 10-15 minutes after you began churning the ice cream (at the point in which the ice cream is starting to thicken, but is still not ready). Slowly introduce the candy cane pieces so that they are mixed well throughout the ice cream.