Rich and chewy, this gelato is incredibly easy to make. Use really ripe bananas and a good-quality dark rum for the best results. Once the gelato has frozen, place in an airtight container and freeze for an hour to firm it up a bit.

I really like the chocolate sorbet by Double Rainbow ice cream (a San Francisco company, by the way), but as I was hovering over the freezer case at Trader Joe’s, I thought to myself–I can make this at home. I had a chocolate sorbet recipe that came with my ice cream machine that I liked, but it was only good, not great, so I went hunting for a new one. And then I came across this one in David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. It uses both chopped chocolate and cocoa …

I had never paid much attention to this recipe in Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts until one day, I run across it while reading through a Nigella Lawson cookbook. She reprints it, exclaiming how wonderful it is. Figuring it must be a good recipe for one chef to reprint it in their own cookbook, I had to try it. And Nigella is right. It’s a great, flourless chocolate cake that’s not too heavy. Don’t skip on the whipped cream topping–that definitely adds a necessary piece to the overall mixture.

A classic recipe for making these, used in Tiramisu

This is the first ice cream Ingo made than Jane called “perfectly made.” She, however, could have used more burnt sugar flavor, so decide how long you wish to burn the sugar yourself.

A wonderful easy pear sorbet.