You’re the coolest

Our enduring love affair with ice cream

I live in Maine, also known as Vacationland, and this is the time of year when our fair state fills up with seafood lovers, boat people, fans of rocky coastlines and frigid Atlantic dips. We host a lot of out-of-town visitors, and I dutifully and joyfully take them to the best lobster shack, the prettiest beach, and, of course, for the very best ice cream in the whole state world, which is made by Krista Kern Desjarlais and served at Bresca & the Honey Bee, a tiny yellow shack by a little lake about 30 minutes from my house.

Krista opened her scoop shop in 2013, two weeks after closing her James Beard-nominated Portland restaurant, Bresca. Her ice cream is not just cold, creamy, and sweet; it’s a master class in how to push the boundaries on something beloved and familiar. Yes, there is strawberry (in season, made with local berries) but also an artichoke ice cream (hearts simmered in simple syrup, then folded into the custard base) inspired by a French recipe from the 1800s, a Key lime crème fraîche ice cream that I dream about all winter, and salted black licorice ice cream, which is admittedly an acquired taste I have acquired.

Happiness is a cold scoop.

Though frozen desserts date back centuries, ice cream as we know it, made with dairy and sugar, is credited to Antonio Latini, who worked for a Spanish Viceroy in Naples in the 17th century. (Naples, home of great pizza and the birthplace of ice cream?! It hardly seems fair.) Ice cream made its way to America in the 1700s with the colonists, who used hand-cranked machines and molds to shape the frozen treat into the shape of fruits, vegetables, and animals.

Fire and ice! Drama! Baked Alaska!

At home, I have an aging but functional Cuisinart ice cream maker, a very worn copy of David Lebovitz’s seminal book, The Perfect Scoop, my eye on Marie Frank’s More Than Sweet (having already purchased, via eBay, the silver coupes to make my scoops look like hers), several cartons of heavy cream, and lots of enthusiasm. Now, all I need to do is decide what flavor to make. I have a few cans of homemade dulce de leche in my pantry, tempting me with possibility, and two quarts of raspberries I picked from the patch in my neighbor’s back yard. My kids agitate for something with sprinkles, so maybe this Birthday Cake Ice Cream is the move? (It’s no-churn, so you don’t even need an ice cream maker.) In these troubled times, maybe we all need to comfort ourselves with hot fudge, with toasted marshmallow whipped cream? Maybe we all do, actually, scream for ice cream.

Follow these crumbs:

• I am mesmerized by this “embroidered” tomato cookie.

• Shilpa’s mochi corn cake, yes please.

• How is it that I only just learned that comedy director Nick Stoller is also a passionate baker?

• According to the New York Times, it’s bananas’ time to shine. Yes, we have recipes for that.