I'm going to share with you today a new method of making homemade ice cream that produces not only delicious ice cream, but ice cream that keeps well in the freezer.  We love making homemade ice cream in our house, but the one problem was that it didn't keep well in the freezer.  It was delicious and creamy the day you made it, but the next day it formed ice crystals.  This recipe solves that problem.

Here's a great soup for fall.  It uses up some of those zucchini and is easy, fast and healthy.  I just add wine and chicken broth and fresh chopped chives for added flavor. The garlic toasts are a snap to make and add a nice touch to the soup.

I made a great big batch and froze it in containers for winter, along with a big batch of this soup.  It's so nice to pull out soups like this for a nice warm winter lunch.  

There's lots of eggplant in season right now and here's the dish you want to make with it. This wonderful pasta dish is hugely popular in Sicily. It is named after Vincenzo Bellini's opera "Norma".  Bellini was a Sicilian born in Catania, where my mother went to school.  This dish is a delicious vegetarian dish, that uses a lot of the best ingredients of Sicily - eggplant, ricotta salata and basil.   And it's a snap to make. 

Most "Pasta alla Norma" recipes call for frying the eggplant, but I think roasting it is tastier and easier and doesn't take quite so much oil. 

Well, you can actually make any kind of pie you want.  But you will make pie dough.  Because it's such a snap and it's so good when it's homemade.  You don't think you can make homemade pie dough?  What if I told you that if you have a food processor, you can  make it in 60 seconds?  You don't have a food processor?  Put it on your Christmas list. You need one.

Aren't we loving this part of summer, with all the fresh tomatoes and basil?  I sure wish we had a longer growing season here in Michigan.  Here's a great summer salad that uses all those tomatoes and basil and is as beautiful as it is delicious. 

I like the idea of serving little individual desserts at get togethers and these little cheesecakes do the job. People can just pick one up and go - no slicing and serving required. I made lemon pound cake parfaits in taller jars but these little cheesecakes are in the smaller 4-ounce jelly jars. You can find them easily at your grocery store.  They are just about the perfect serving size for all those people who say, "Oh, I shouldn't eat dessert. Well, maybe just a few bites."  The toppings that you can use are endless.  I had to make a few of these with mini chocolate chips for my sweet guy, Nathan - he doesn't do raspberries. I was also thinking a nice layer of caramel sauce would be heavenly.

bowl is from Mystic Mud Studio in Hood River, Oregon

With all the tomatoes in the garden right now, here is great way to use some of those up.  This pasta combines two types of tomatoes - one batch that is slow roasted in the oven and another that is just cut up, fresh.  It requires no real cooking, just letting the little grape tomatoes sit in the oven for a couple of hours at 300 degrees F and then boiling the pasta.  Everything is just tossed together in the serving bowl to create a fresh summer pasta dish with a minimal amount of effort.

When buying the mozzarella, try to find the type that is packed in water and comes in tubs. It's much fresher tasting and the texture is better than the type that is vacuum sealed.

Tip:  I've also made this recipe with grape tomatoes for both the roasted and fresh.  Works great. And another great pasta for this is orrecchiete - it holds the sauce so well.

For those of you fortunate enough to have a lot of basil in your garden right now, this is a perfect summer bread.  I make fresh bread almost every day for my family using this super easy method but once in a while it's nice to stuff the bread with a savory filling.

When I make this, I don't really use a hard and fast recipe for the pesto, but I've written one up for you.  Pesto is so easy - a big handful of fresh basil, a garlic clove, a little scoop of pine nuts and some grated cheese and olive oil.  Make it into a paste by either chopping by hand (I like my mezzaluna) or whirling it all up in your food processor.  I do like doing it by hand sometimes because the texture has such a rustic feel to it.  The food processor, or course, is much faster.  No time to make pesto?  Use a store bought version and you'll still have a very tasty bread.  

Doesn't this look refreshing? While we were in Chicago for our son's graduation last month, we ate at an Italian restaurant which served a cocktail that I had never heard of.  I was curious because it contained Aperol, the Italian liquor that I wrote about previously. This cocktail is delicious and just right for an evening on the patio!

There's been a lot going on around here!  It seems like we haven't had much time at home because of all our out of town trips on the weekends.  All fun stuff, though.  I just have to share a couple of the highlights with you.  First of all, our oldest son graduated from college and I still can't get used to the idea. It was a great weekend in Chicago, with dinners at Anteprima, Va Pensiero and what turned out to be everyone's favorite - Uncommon Ground.  I'm going to be highlighting a cocktail we had in Chicago that we loved. I'll post about that next time.  Here is my Northwestern graduate with his brothers.  We are so proud!

Before I get into the dessert I'm posting about today, I wanted to share with you a cake I made this weekend that was so pretty. I thought you might like links to the recipe and method I used. For the cake, I used Bakerella's Red Velvet Cake recipe with Cream Cheese Frosting. Tremendous cake.  It's really moist and the cream cheese frosting is incredible. I've made it before and just frosted it straight up, but this time I made one and a half times the frosting recipe and made these roses all over the cake:

Here is your summer side dish for grilled meats. This simple pasta dish of cheese and cracked black pepper is one of my family's favorites. If you've ever been to Rome, you will see this dish on practically every menu.  It is simple and fast to make. Once your water is boiling, it is a 5 minute preparation.

This is a funny little recipe.  It only has four ingredients and requires no baking. I used to make this cake when my boys were little and it always amazed me.  I was looking through my recipes the other day for something and came upon this and had fond memories of it.  I can't even remember where I got this recipe from anymore, but it's a winner.

I hope everyone had a nice Easter holiday. I was overwhelmed, once again, by how many people made the Italian Easter Breads.  I'm so glad so many of you enjoyed them and that your kids loved them.  Thanks for all the e-mails.  I baked so many desserts myself this past weekend and each once was special.  I made this fantastic cake from Sweetapolita, David Lebovitz's fantastic lime tart and this pretty cheesecake.

I didn't want to post this recipe, but Brian made me do it.  This is one of his favorite sauces and he'll ask me from time to time if I've ever put it up on the blog.  And the answer has always been "no", because although we love this sauce, it's not much of a recipe and I didn't think it was blog-worthy.  Well, I've caved in and here it is.  

When I first posted the recipe for Italian Easter Bread three years ago, I couldn't believe the response. Every year as Easter approaches, I still get many e-mails about this recipe, so I thought I would make it again in a little different way and this also gives me the chance to update the recipe a little.

This bread is a sweet, delicious bread and so kids love it.  When I've made it for my kids I've usually topped it with colored sprinkles and eggs dyed different colors.  This year, I made golden eggs and topped the breads with Swedish Pearl Sugar from Lars, which doesn't melt when you bake the bread and looks pretty. 

Wow, that sounds complicated, doesn't it?  Actually, this rich dessert isn't that hard to make.  If you've never made marshmallow meringue before, you are in for a real treat. It's easy, insanely delicious and a has a real "wow" factor.  

I've made these cakes many times and they are supposed to be served unmolded, upside down on a plate. Because they are so gooey on the inside, sometimes they fall apart a bit after unmolding.  I just quit messing with that step and I just serve them now in the ramekins, but you can certainly unmold them if you want. If you don't unmold them, you can pipe the marshmallow right on top, which I prefer. 

I wanted to make these for you and post them before Christmas, but it just didn't happen. I've been eating so many oranges lately - the California Navel oranges have been so incredible for several weeks now - that I hated to see all those peels go to waste.  This seemed like a good time for Orangettes.

Orangettes are candied orange peels that are dipped in chocolate.  I think dark chocolate gives the nicest flavor with the orange.  They are a great little snack and actually go so nicely with a cup of spiced tea. 

It's funny how short ribs have turned up on so many restaurant menus over the last few years. - especially in fine dining establishments, where they charge an arm and a leg for them.  They've become very trendy, but the dish itself is cheap, easy to prepare and a real no brainer - it's one of those long braises in the oven that you have to try really hard to mess up. 

Short ribs aren't for everyone - they are a very fatty cut of meat but, of course, that's why the dish is so flavorful and rich.  If you make this dish the day before, or early in the day, you can refrigerate the liquid and let the fat rise to the top, to be skimmed off.  This is worth doing and the dish will actually be more flavorful if you make it the day before.  It's a lazy day dish - just pop it in the oven and forget about it for a couple of hours. 

You're going to love this recipe.  This stuffed focaccia is so delicious and such a crowd pleaser. It begins with my old standby focaccia recipe, the one I've made for 15 years, from Carol Field.  I make this bread so much that I don't even need the recipe anymore.  I take the dough, divide it in half and put one piece in a spring form (cheesecake) pan. I make up a stuffing of turkey sausage and plenty of onions and fill the pan and then lay the rest of the dough on top. I make mine spicy with the addition of a habanero chili, but you can certainly leave that out. You can really stuff it with anything you like - swap out the meat for lots of vegetables, like roasted peppers or mushrooms, if you want a vegetarian version.