Lorin Kleinman   Reading, writing, and occasionally eating.

There are millions of cookbooks. General cookbooks that explain how to boil an egg, specialty cookbooks that teach macaron-making, good cookbooks, bad cookbooks, cookbooks for every conceivable culinary interest.  And every so often, a great cookbook.

I’m a big fan of David Lebovitz’s blog, but his book The Perfect Scoop had sat unused until last week. I’m not sure why: what better way to spend the summer than making ice cream? But then, finally, I made chocolate ice cream and caramel sauce and French almonds and butter pecan ice cream and mocha sauce and strawberry sorbet and lemon sorbet.  They were all spectacular. (Lebovitz claims that it’s called butterscotch because it needs scotch, and with the Jack Daniels I put in, it was the best butter pecan ice cream I’d ever eaten.)

The Perfect Scoop is cheerfully and clearly written–and extremely well tested. The recipes–which cover ice cream, sorbet, granitas, toppings and containers–vary from the uncontroversial to the adventurous.  I haven’t made parsley ice cream yet, but I’m sure it will be delicious.

So if you’ve ever wanted to make ice cream, buy this book.  (And an ice cream maker, if necessary.)