An unadorned but thorough recipe book of primarily alcoholic ice cream drinks.
In this culinary guide, Rasmussen treats readers to the wonders of the made-at-home ice cream cocktail.
What’s better than ice cream? Maybe ice cream with a little booze in it. “When you go to a restaurant and order an ice cream drink,” writes the author in her introduction, “they always look amazing when the server appears with your order. And they taste as good as they look.” Why, then, don’t more people make them at home to serve to guests? An ice cream cocktail requires surprisingly little equipment to make and can be prepared in batches ahead of a gathering (so long as they are given the proper time to thaw). With this book, Rasmussen offers readers a cornucopia of recipes sure to wow guests, both in terms of presentation and taste. Satisfy the chocolate lover in your life with a Frigid Turtle or a Chocolate Scotch-a-Roo. Go for something fruity with a Peaches & Cream Tango or a Liquid Banana Split. Add coffee to the mix for a Frosty Cappuccino or a Jiving Java. The author includes a section for teetotalers as well, including alcohol-free versions of some of her more interesting combinations, like the Cookies ’N’ Cream Grasshopper and the cake-themed Happy Birthday To Me! The recipes are simple and include ingredient amounts for both small and large batches. The instructions are short and concerned mostly with mixing and negotiating the temperatures of the various ingredients. The Grasshopper recipe begins with Rasmussen’s typically succinct prose: “Remove ice cream and Cool Whip™ from freezer ahead of time. Cool Whip™ should be completely thawed before using. Ice cream should be soft enough to mix with an electric hand mixer. In an extra-large mixing bowl, blend ice cream until smooth.” The book includes photographs of some of the drinks, which is useful, as well as clip art, which is less so. The ice cream cocktail may have a limited fanbase, but those within it will have fun working their way through this book.
An unadorned but thorough recipe book of primarily alcoholic ice cream drinks.Pub Date: May 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781961117235
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Blueprint Press Internationale
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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