Scooped Ice Cream Treats, Cheats, and Frozen Eats by Southern Living

Warning* This book is all about ice cream, therefore I am not responsible for the drool that will drip onto your keyboard, or phone..

The dollar store carries pretty much the coolest recipe books I have ever come to known. It's almost surprising to see them on the shelves sometimes because I regard them as too high quality. Scooped is actually a flexibound book, so it's a cross between paperback and hardcover. I am not complaining that it's being sold at dolllarama, though!

In fact, I'm pretty happy about it. Oh how I love shopping at the dollar store.

What's inside?

To sum it up: It contains pretty much all of your wildest ice cream dream recipes.

This ice cream book has everything you will need to host an ice cream party, right down to the toppings themselves and everything in-between. It's a flexibound book with 255 pages and almost every recipe has a photograph (which is very helpful with visual learners). It has eight chapters with valuable tips and of course, tasty dessert recipes!

Let's dig in!

Chapter One - Socials

This is all about the social aspect of how to host your own ice cream party, even helping you with menu selection and must-haves you should buy to make your party a huge success!

Chapter Two - Bites

This chapter is all about bite sized pops, bonbons, bars and mini treats. These are extravagant desserts with a twist and are super easy to make!

Chapter Three - Ice Cream Sundae's

It's a classic amongst most restaurants. Can you guess what it is? It's the sundae! The answer is right there in the title!

Did you know that November 11th is national sundae day? I did not know that! Did you also know that the most expensive ice cream sundae was sold in New York City by a restaurant called Serendipity 3? The more you know.. It's a crazy amount of money to spend but just to list of a couple ingredients like Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream and 23 karat gold edible gold leaf makes you understand the price. If you like sundae's, this chapter will be your dream come true.

Chapter Four - Pies

If you're somebody that likes pies and tarts but you're not in love with it yet? Then let me introduce you to page 80 so you can speed up the process! These pies and tarts are attractive and their only purpose is to please you. And that certainly won't be an issue with say, Key Lime Ice Cream Pie (an actual recipe from the book). Go find the pie of your dreams!

Chapter Five - Cakes

Cakes. The most widely known and recognized dessert on the planet. But these aren't just slabs of cake with frosting, these are flavour and visual artistry cakes. They do not shy away from attention! If you're intention is to impress, then this is the chapter you've been waiting for. I love that each recipe is a contrast from the next one, and there really is something for everyone here.

Chapter Six - Shakes

For those of you who enjoy drinking their ice-cream, then these frosty, swirled delights will satisfy your cravings. They share their most unique flavour blends that you'll definetly want to try with your friends and family! My personal favourite; the peach melba shake.

Chapter Seven - Ice Cream from scratch

This is the most significant part of the book because it teaches you how to make ice cream from scratch! And most, if not all people, can agree that home-made ice cream is uniquely better tasting. Your title quickly becomes 'artisan' when you make instead of buy.

This chapter was my favourite because, essentially I'm just interested in the ice cream. They have recipes that range in flavour and use non traditional toppings and blends that make it stand out and grab attention. For example, I would have never thought to mix in caramel and cashew together (p.203). Or even popcorn (p.184). It's completely different than what I'm used to and that's what makes it awesome.

Chapter Eight - Extras

In this final chapter, they share recipes for toppings, sauces, crusts and cookies. I love each of these equally but sometimes one can outshine the other. And that's cookies. And there is one recipe in here that I looked at and very impressed by. It's called Mississippi Mud Cookies. Out of every recipe I saw, that one is the one I will actually make. As for the rest of the extras, it is impressively simple. You adore this finally chapter!

Things I did not like..

There is only one thing that I did not enjoy and that was having all the ice cream recipes at the very back of the book. It is an ice cream book after all, so I would have thought that making them front and centre would make more sense. I noticed when you read one of the very first recipes, cinnamon-chocolate chip ice cream balls, that the ingredients called for 1/2 gallon of vanilla ice cream but it didn't state if it was store bought, or even the page number to the recipe at the back.

My final thoughts

This belong is easy to follow along and includes photographs of most of the recipes written in the book (which is a huge selling point for me). It included useful ice cream tips, facts and techniques on most pages and I found myself going through each page to learn more. I really enjoyed that they included non traditional ingredient combinations and contrasting flavours. It certainly wasn't a boring book to read and learned a lot more new things I didn't know the day before.