10 Fantastic Ice Cream Recipes

Summer is heating up. Cool down with these 10 fabulous, fantastic ice cream recipes.

“It’s gonna be a hot one,” a maintenance worker said this morning. We were standing in my kitchen, while he prepared to install new smoke detectors in my townhouse. “Going to be quite humid too.”

I smiled, nodded and made a mental note to ensure that all the blinds in my house were closed when I left for work. That helps keep the house cool even on what’s considered a hot and steamy day for Maine. As long as the house remains cool, it’s pretty easy to stay comfortable here.

For the record, what’s hot here in Maine is barely warm in Connecticut where we used to live. What a change.

Back in Connecticut, July meant the hum of air conditioners, sweltering heat and a perverse feeling that you were practically swimming through the air. We used phrases like “you can cut the humidity with a knife,” and “the sweat is pouring off me,” and really meant it. But as hot as July could be, relief would come with the onset of August. Suddenly, evenings would be cooler and it was a toss up whether you really needed the air conditioning or not. Ultimately though, heat there was nothing compared to what friends in Texas, Florida and similar places deal with for longer each summer.

Here it’s completely different though.

One of the things I love about living in Maine is that I don’t need air conditioning. I’ve never been a fan of it — I think it’s a vicious cycle you get into with air conditioners, throwing off your body rhythm and making it hard to ever be comfortable. So I am grateful that a simple window fan can cool off our bedrooms in minutes. And really, most nights are cool anyway, which means we barely even need those fans. It’s kind of awesome. (And this weather makes lightweight summery sweaters finally make sense to me. I’ve always wondered who wore those …)

But regardless of the magnitude of the heat, I still adore ice cream in the summertime. There’s something about digging into a cool bowl of sweetness that seems perfect on warm days.

Whatever hot means to you, summertime is the perfect time to enjoy ice cream treats. And these 10 recipes are a fabulous way to dig into a cool treat.