You know that feeling you get after you’ve had your heart broken and then you meet someone new, and suddenly it feels like every cell in your body is waking up?

Something about this ice cream reminds me of that.

Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the rich, lemony cheesecake flavor (which I will forever associate with post-breakup rituals, thanks to “The Golden Girls”) against all of those ripe, sweet, promising berries. But then there’s also the addictive crunch of the graham cracker crumble. And that dreamy ribbon of strawberry sauce.

This is ice cream worth shaving your legs for. And you don’t even need a candy thermometer.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

I come from a hot pudding family. Mama always served it as hot as we could stand it, but I’m sure that was more of a mental health strategy than a culinary choice. From the time we got that first whiff of chocolate coming from the pot on the stove, my sister and I would buzz around the kitchen emitting a high-frequency tone inaudible to people over 30. We were relentless. Excited. Maybe a little scary. Hence the bowls of scalding-hot pudding.

Mama needed some relief.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

If you’ve never enjoyed a tender Tennessee summer, you should know that at a certain point, everything stops and it gets quiet. Cookouts stop. Mowing stops. The kids stop playing outside. Even the crazy-hardcore woman who does reverse lunges in long, jerky, backwards steps past the house twice a day suddenly disappears. The only sounds you hear outside are the crickets, the rustling of the dry grass and “Pop Goes the Weasel” blaring from the ice cream truck as it circles the neighborhood, completely uninterrupted. Because it’s just too hot. Unmercifully hot. Wringing-the-sweat-out-of-your-bra hot.

When it’s this hot, you just have to give in to it. Relent. Stay inside, get naked and catch up on “Shark Week.” And hook up some ice-cold adult beverages.

This Kahlúa-Spiked Frozen Mocha Latte requires a little preparation. First, you make espresso ice cubes by combining sugar, instant espresso powder, cocoa powder, water, salt and half-and-half and pouring the mixture into ice cube trays. Then, once your cubes are frozen, you can toss a few into the blender with a little (or a lot) of Kahlúa, and blend everything until it’s smooth and thick, like a milkshake. Pour the mixture into a chilled glass (or two), top it with a spoonful of brown-sugar sweetened whipped cream, and commence the sippin’. This is how summer was meant to be survived.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

I just can’t help myself.

In just a few weeks, the good peaches will be a memory. Like the afternoon I spent with my nephews, snacking on mini peach pies and playing “Connect Four.” Or the big summer lunch with all of the ladies in the family, eating warm peach cobbler while my baby niece squealed and flashed her new teeth.

The time to indulge is NOW.

I can’t think of a more indulgent peach pie recipe than Ken Haedrich’s Triple Vanilla Bean-Scented All-Peach Pie. Vanilla sugar sprinkled like fairy dust over the peaches in the filling, the pie crust – even the whipped cream. That combination of sweet, delicate vanilla and bold, sultry peaches is as heady and powerful and fleeting as a first kiss. Which is why one slice won’t do.

Thank God swimsuit season is almost over.

P.S. Wanna talk pie? Join the discussion on the EPC Facebook page.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Parchment paper. Ramekins. Candy thermometers. These are tools for when it’s less than 100 degrees F outside.

But when you make that first trip to the mailbox that leaves you sweating like a whore in church, it’s time to downshift into Summer Mode and survive on foods that require as little effort as possible. Leftover peach cobbler for breakfast. Tomato sandwiches. Big salads. Vegetable plates. Pimento cheese. BLTs. And a batch of Mama’s Trashy-Good Orange Crush Sherbet.

My mom has been making this sherbet since the beginning of time. When Adam and Eve were booted from the Garden of Eden, my mom handed them each a cone of orange sherbet and told them to stay out of the tall grass or they’d get chiggers. I can’t imagine a summer without a bowl. Sure, you could make an orange sherbet with actual fruit juices, but something about the trashy triumvirate of Orange Crush soda, sweetened condensed milk and canned crushed pineapple makes me giddy. Stir them together, pour them directly into your ice cream maker, and you get an orange sherbet that tastes like a Creamsicle on crack.

So sweet. So cold. So, so wrong.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

So, what do you get when you take a few scoops of the Lee Brothers’ Bourbon Vanilla Ice Cream, swaddle them in a warm ladleful of John Currence’s very bourbony Salted Bourbon-Caramel Sauce and crown them with David Lebovitz’s Buttercrunch Toffee?

Oh, Baby.

It’ll make your toes curl.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

“Orange blossom honey. Georgia peaches. Whole milk, cream, sugar. I expected it to be good, but even the smallest bite blooms with the flavor of ripe peaches and cold, sweet cream.”

That’s what I said last year about Dorie Greenspan’s Honey-Peach Ice Cream, but back then, I was a member of Tuesdays with Dorie and couldn’t share the recipe here. It drove me nuts, because this is the best peach ice cream I’ve ever had and one of my favorite ice cream recipes, period.

Summer in a cone.

So, I knew I would make another batch this month. But when I clicked on the recipe link, it was dead. The blog it was posted on doesn’t even exist anymore. Depressing, yes, but the upside is that I have no one left to offend by posting this recipe here! Huzzah!

Prepare for the peachgasm.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

I like to imagine myself going berry-picking and coming home with baskets full of ripe, gorgeous strawberries, blackberries and blueberries that smell so good, you can’t keep your hands off them all the way home. Fruit still warm from the sun, like the wide, flat cut-off cardboard boxes full of strawberries that our neighbors used to bring over when I was a kid.

But we haven’t had a great berry season. Flooding and berries just don’t go together. And, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this at your grocery, but berries are expensive. Especially if you’re the only one in your house eating them.

So, I started looking for a recipe that was all about the berries – no crust, no crumble, no cobbler – and I found Ina Garten’s Fruit Salad with Limoncello.

If you’ve been longing for an excuse to buy a bottle of this lovely lemony liqueur, let this be it.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Do you remember last spring’s Strawberry Shortcake with Cream Biscuits? The Alice Waters recipe? The one with the “spoonfuls of slightly sweetened strawberries and vanilla whipped cream spilling out of a just-cooled biscuit dusted with powdered sugar”?

Well, I thought I’d never try another strawberry shortcake recipe, ever. I thought I was ready to embrace strawberry shortcake monogamy. But then someone suggested that I try this Ponchatoula Strawberry and Brown Butter Shortcake from “DamGoodSweet,”a cookbook I’ve been carrying lust in my heart for for many, many months. Why? Because it’s a dangerous treasure trove of New Orleans-style desserts. We’re not just talking classics like beignets and Bananas Foster. Chef David Guas summons the beast. Double Chocolate Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce? Yes. Brandy Milk Punch Ice Cream? Absolutely. Is your appetite suddenly going berserk? See what I mean?

Baby

Continue reading: Ponchatoula Strawberry and Brown Butter Shortcake

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Don’t you hate it when you bring someone a fresh batch of homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies, and they start spitting raisins, like you just fed them a rabbit turd sammich?

That was the situation a few weeks ago, when my sister took a bite of one of those cookies and registered her displeasure. She’d expected chocolate. She wanted chocolate. And the next time I showed up, I’d better bring some chocolate.

So, as Lt. Aldo Raine of “Inglourious Basterds” might say, I obliged her with this Chocolate Ka-Blamo! Cake.

The Ultimate Weapon of Ass Destruction.

© 2010 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.