Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Book

You could say that here at Van Leeuwen, we love ice cream. It’s our life—from dawn to dusk—and it is love of ice cream that prompted us to start our company in the first place. We wanted to make the kind of ice cream our grandmothers made back in the day, without any odd additives, and with ingredients readily available in our cupboards.

Anyone who knows our ice cream firsthand knows that we’re unabashed fans of the French (yolk-based) custard. We love the smooth body and mouthfeel of creamy ice cream, and base our ice creams on this formula while varying the number of yolks and the amounts of fat and sugar, depending on the specific flavor.

We’re also known for ice cream that tastes less sweet compared with others. We’ve purposefully scaled back on sugar, because we know that when we eat something sweet, each subsequent bite tastes sweeter and sweeter. That first sweet bite might be pleasant but is likely to taste way too sweet by the end.

Having said all that, the ice creams in this book are slightly sweeter and richer than the ice creams in our shop. This is because when we scaled our recipes down for smaller-batch testing, in some cases we wound up with fractions of egg yolks. Instead, we chose to scale some ingredients up or down, depending on each individual flavor.

We also wanted to showcase the best ingredients we could find. We scoured the globe to find pistachio paste from Sicily’s Mount Etna, single-plantation chocolate from Michel Cluizel, and palm sugar from an inspiring, ecologically responsible farm in Indonesia, just to name a few. And we’re constantly tasting new ingredients to find the best in class.

Some of the recipes here have been created for the book and have since been featured in our stores and as limited-edition pints. Others are mainstays and patron favorites. These are some of our favorite flavors, and we are excited to share them with you. Once you get the hang of these—and get comfortable with making custard (see for detailed instructions)—we hope you have fun experimenting in the kitchen and making your own favorite flavors. When it comes to ice cream, the sky is the limit.