A Passion for Ice Cream by Emily Luchetti. Available for US$23.10 from Amazon.com. Emily Luchetti, a creative pastry chef who has worked at some of San Francisco's top eateries - including the now defunct Stars restaurant and her current employer, Farallon - has come up with a tempting book for summer. A Passion for Ice Cream follows in the footsteps of other Luchetti tomes, such as Stars Desserts and A Passion for Desserts, with inventive recipes and complex flavours. You can make one of Luchetti's easy ice creams or sorbets, or combine them with other recipes in the book for slightly more difficult desserts. Chapters include 'Simply presented' (chocolate cupcakes stuffed with pistachio ice cream, caramelised-apple and butter-pecan ice-cream sundaes); 'With your fingers' (cinnamon snap rolls filled with creme-fraiche ice cream, fudge-cookie and mint-chip ice-cream sandwiches); 'Through a straw' (lemonade-strawberry floats with mascarpone ice cream, mango spritzers with lime sherbet, iced espresso floats with white chocolate ice cream); and 'In a mold' (frozen marjolaine with almond meringue and Mexican-chocolate ice cream, maple-walnut ice cream and coffee sherbet bombe, s'mores ice-cream cake with cappuccino and chocolate-chip ice cream). She offers alternative flavours, troubleshooting tips and advice on equipment and ingredients. My one quibble with the book is that the ingredients are measured by volume rather than by weight, which is much more precise.
