You’ve heard of crack babies? Well, I’m an ice cream baby thanks to my Mom’s banana split per day habit when she was pregnant with me.

Ice cream is my year-round favorite food. I’ve waited in lines outdoors in winter for ice cream. When my first serving of ice cream doesn’t satisfy me, I feel no shame about getting a second. I sometimes eat ice cream for dinner. It’s possible I fell for my husband because he was an ice cream server at our school’s cafeteria when we met. I love ice cream is what I’m saying.

In my youth during the 80s, my parents got me an ice cream maker for Christmas. I was so excited to use it, but no matter what I did, the mix came out of the machine as frustratingly liquid as it went in. Thus, I spent years thinking you couldn’t make ice cream at home.

But the dream never really died, even during an 18-year (but who’s counting?) detour into social science research. In January of 2012, I took an ice cream course and bought a better ice cream machine. Since then, I have made ice cream almost every week, much to the delight of my mouth and the consternation of my pants.

I’ve learned that ice cream making is as much science as it is art, and that’s fine with me because designing and conducting experiments is what I do for a living. Now I also apply these skills to making the best ice cream possible.

The goal of my experiments is ice cream that is velvety smooth and packed with flavor. I don’t mix cookie dough into vanilla ice cream, I try to figure out how to make every bite of ice cream taste like cookie dough.

The flavor ideas, recipes, writing, and photos shared here are all my creations, unless otherwise noted. See the reprint policy page for more details.