We’re eating tart and creamy lemon cheesecake ice cream made with fresh, local lemons, cream cheese and a swirl of crumbled graham cracker.

Until about a week or two ago there was no possible way for us to make and feature ice creams or sorbets on WWE due to our lack of equipment. Then our wonderful friend Nicole swooped in and saved the day. While browsing through a thrift store, she found the exact model of ice cream maker she uses, but for about 1/6 of the cost. Lucky for me, she didn’t let this amazing find pass her by. Nope, she snatched that thing on up and gave it to little ole me! (Maybe because I’ve been threatening to make gin sorbet using her machine for the past six months & she’s hoping to avoid the hangover from gorging on it!)

In another showing of Nicole’s awesomeness, she took me over to her sister’s house, who happens to have a huge lemon tree, and we were given an insane number of lemons, fresh from the tree! AND we didn’t even have to pick them ourselves. Nicole’s sister, Penny, had already done all the work. Thanks, Penny! You rock! Hell, your whole family rocks!

Equipped with my new ice cream maker and a butt-ton of fresh lemons, there was only 1 conclusion for me to reach: lemon ice cream! I knew that I also wanted it to be a cream cheese based ice cream as they tend to be my favorite and you don’t find them too frequently out here. (In Louisiana, that was a different story.) With this in mind I set out on a google search to show me ingredient ratios to make the perfect ice cream. Recipe after recipe that I looked at was filled with a huge number of eggs and cups of heavy cream! UGH! I was already going to be adding 8oz of cream cheese to my recipe so I really didn’t want all the excess cholesterol and fat included in all the recipes I was finding.

Fortunately I then remembered the King of Ice Cream, The Perfect Scoop Author, the fabulous David Lebovitz. After perusing his site for a while I came across this recipe for pistachio gelato where he uses milk and corn starch to form a pastry cream as the base of his gelato rather than a custard of eggs and heavy cream. Perfect!

It was exactly what I was looking for. With this technique in hand, I set out to make what turned out to be a deliciously refreshing, creamy, tart lemon ice cream… thanks to Nicole, Penny and David!

Recipes in this post:

• Lemon Cheesecake Ice Cream

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3. Cinnamon Apple Pecan Crumb Bars

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All things taste better drenched in salted caramel sauce… at least sweet things that is! While this cheesecake was freaking great on its own, the salted caramel just took the experience to a whole different dimension.

Every year when a certain friend of ours with an insatiable sweet tooth comes to visit we always make her a birthday dessert. Every year she asks for croquembouche and this year I finally said yes to making it. I had started my research and was nearly ready to begin baking when I received a call from our friend letting me off the hook. While I think she was feeling guilty for getting me to agree to make a laborious, traditional french wedding cake for her amusement…er, enjoyment, she claims that what she was really craving was cheesecake… cheesecake and caramel sauce! Two of my favorite sweet things ever. I couldn’t deny my friend what she really wanted, could I? So here we have it. Plain decedent cheesecake topped with gooey salted caramel sauce.

Recipes in this post:

• Classic Dreamy Cheesecake
• Salted Caramel Sauce

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1. Lemon Cheesecake Ice Cream Recipe
2. Gooey Pecan Pie with a Nutella Bottom
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