After the recent Pinkberry scandal, where should fans  turn for a froyo that’s truly au natural? Look no further than our upcoming June issue, which features extraordinary frozen yogurt recipes (as well as ice creams and sorbets) from the ice cream maverick, Jeni Britton of Jeni Britton’s Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus, Ohio.

When we asked Jeni to give us recipes for her incredibly creamy, cult-worthy  ice creams, she started from scratch. Apparently, ice creams made in professional machines and kept frozen at sub-Arctic temperatures don’t translate easily to equipment available to the home cook.

Jeni’s food science professor friend at Ohio State University told her that a great homemade ice cream with a shelf life beyond a few hours was impossible--he said they all inevitably become icy. Jeni, however, ignored him and set about revolutionizing homemade ice cream with nothing more than a $250 Cuisinart ICE-50BC machine (in our test kitchen--the simpler $50 model worked equally well), Organic Valley dairy and a lot of gumption.

To develop her vanilla ice cream recipe, she slung her adorable then two-month-old daughter on her back and over a solid month, tested 75 batches before feeling satisfied. She started with recipes from cookbooks, most which call for egg yolks, all which ended up with ice crystals. Since she doesn’t use eggs at her shops, she ideally wanted an eggless home recipe.

In the end, she developed several tricks to make perfect homemade vanilla ice cream:

• Using sugar and corn syrup, which help “tie up” the loose water molecules that cause iciness.
• Boiling the cream and milk with the sugar helps thoroughly incorporate the sugar and evaporate some of the excess water.
• Adding cornstarch to thicken the cream and absorb water.
• Whisking in cream cheese to help improve the final body of the ice cream.

The result: the best homemade ice creams to ever hit your spoon. And if the DIY approach to ice cream isn't your thing, Jeni's does offer mail order.

Never underestimate the palettes of children. Not all rely on chicken nuggets, boxed mac and cheese and Lunchables. Meet my young friends Jack and Ian, whose mom placed the winning bid on a "Tour of the Test Kitchen and Cooking Lesson" on their behalf. They're 10 years old and eat anything not nailed down. When asked what they'd like to learn, they said,  "Something spicy, ethnic and complicated." How cool was that? With just two hours to do everything (including eat), I suggested Vietnamese food: spicy, ethnic and complicated—and quick.

"The recipes I chose were yummy fresh summer rolls with a spicy nuoc cham and a fantastic banh mi (Vietnamese hero sandwich) from Charles Phan, chef and owner of The Slanted Door in San Francisco. The summer rolls were especially fun for the guys because they could get their hands dirty and NOT have to wash them before eating. The spicy pork meatball banh mi on the other hand required hand washing before AND after cooking. Fish sauce, an otherwise adult flavor (or so I thought), was quite popular, as were the fiery hot Thai chiles for the nuoc cham.

As a mom of two kids and (just as importantly) a recipe developer, I think this encounter with my friends Jack and Ian has changed the way I'll think about children and their eating. I won't be so quick to dismiss their budding taste buds or take for granted their willingness to try something otherwise "Ew , gross." 

My old Brazilian nanny, feeling displaced and perpetually homesick (Brazilians call it saudade), would only crack a smile when I made Brazil's national dish feijoada, which, for the sake of my family's happiness, turned out to be a weekly occurrence. It's a hearty stew made with black beans, pork shoulder, carne seca (dried beef like beef jerky), linguiça calabresa (a pork sausage like kielbasa) and hunks of slab bacon. It's quite a project—one that I reserve for the weekend. But saudade doesn't differentiate between weekday and weekend, so I found myself making a fast version using canned beans, kielbasa and roasted pork from my local Dominican restaurant. It was good enough to stanch my nanny's longing, but I began to get saudade for the real thing, so here it is:
FEIJOADA

Traditional feijoada calls for carne seca—dried beef-which is hard to find outside of Brazilian neighborhoods. I like to use serrano ham, prosciutto or bresaola (Italian air-dried beef) because it most closely approximates carne seca's slightly gamey, meaty flavor.

ACTIVE: 20 MIN TOTAL: 2 HR 20 MIN
8 SERVINGS

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds slab bacon, cut into 3 pieces
1 large white onion, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 jalapeños or serrano chiles, whole
1 pound dried black beans, sorted and rinsed
1/2 pound serrano ham, in one piece, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 bay leaf
2 thyme sprigs
1 pound andouille sausage or kielbasa, cut into 2-inch pieces
Steamed rice for serving

In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil. Add the bacon and cook over high heat, turning once or twice, until browned and crusty, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Add the onion, garlic and chiles to the pot and cook over low heat until barely softened, 5 minutes. Add the beans and 8 cups of water. Return the bacon to the pot along with the serrano ham, nestling them into the beans. Add the bay leaf and thyme sprigs and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the beans are nearly tender, 1 hour and 15 minutes. Add the sausage and cook uncovered, until the meat and beans are tender and the liquid is slightly thickened, 30 minutes. Discard the chiles, bay leaf and thyme sprig and serve with rice.

make ahead The feijoada can be refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for 1 month.

I've only ever come across one person who doesn't like cupcakes, not entirely unexpected since that person also doesn't much care for sweets, kids or parties (all of a piece). I, on the other hand, am obsessed with the little darlings (cupcakes, that is). I search them (as well as products, tools and storage related to them) out in print, in bakeries, online, on TV...you name it. Which is why May's Tasting & Testing was so much fun for me to work on. I created two cake batters, a yellow and a chocolate—both using butter and vegetable oil to keep them ultra-moist—and three frostings—marshmallow, chocolate, and vanilla buttercream. Plus, there are a host of toppings and add-ins to create dozens and dozens of mix-and-match variations. I can't wait for the next birthday!

I had made Irish soda bread early in the day in anticipation of my family's St. Pat's celebration meal, but I was undecided about the main course. Lamb chops or Corned beef? Lamb chops were faster, but corned beef was easier (and less messy). The only problem was that it was already 5:30—I normally feed my lot at 6:30, and corned beef usually takes about three hours to braise. So, risking the tough, stringy meat that results from cooking corned beef too quickly and at too high a temperature, I pulled out my pressure cooker. (Mine is a slightly outdated Magefesa made in Italy, but there are so many fantastic models available now) It was too small for a two-pound brisket, so I cut the beef into three even chunks and added about two cups of water, a few bay leaves, a handful of peppercorns and some thyme sprigs and brought it to medium pressure on very low heat. I checked after 45 minutes (my pressure cooker has a steam release valve for quick release), during which time I boiled some Yukon gold potatoes and braised some cabbage in butter, caraway, vinegar and chicken broth. Forty-five minutes wasn't actually enough, so I let it go for another 10 and it was utterly perfect—tender, juicy and just salty enough. Sliced and served with buttered potatoes, silky braised cabbage and of course the Irish soda bread, dinner was ready in one hour—honest!

I recently received a sample of a new, extremely compact version of Seal-a-Meal (a device my colleague Grace Parisi loves) called Vacu-Seal. It's a cordless, hand-held vacuum about the size of a immersion blender that sucks the air out of zipper-top Vacu-Seal bags filled with food, leaving them airtight and ready for storage. I love how compact the vacuum is, and although the bags are a little pricey, they are dishwasher safe so you can use them multiple times-a great plus for the environment. I particularly like how they prevent meat from developing frostbite. For me, living in New York City means not having a great deal of space in my kitchen and although I'd love to be able to have something the size of Seal-a-Meal in my close quarters it's just not possible with all the other kitchen equipment I have. Vacu-Seal takes up no space at all so I'm able to hide it in a drawer. Now if only my freezer was big enough to hold all my full Vacu-Seal bags.

Like many busy people with families and increasingly little time, I do a good deal of my shopping in bulk. I've got my over-stock cabinets above the coat closet and my freezer in the basement, and both get lots of use.

A number of years ago, Seal-a-Meal was in heavy rotation on the infomercial circuit.  It's basically a vacuum that sucks out all the air from heavy-duty food-storage bags intended for the freezer.  I thought it was just about the stupidest piece of equipment ever.   Who needs this junk? Just go shopping, I thought (pre-kids, of course). But when we covered the product at the magazine shortly after that and I had the chance to actually try it out, I quickly changed my tune.  The bags protect even the most delicate meat from freezer burn for up to a year. Seal-a-Meal has become an indispensable tool in my home kitchen and the test kitchen as well. With many on the market, there are a lot of choices.

Of course, the whole sous-vide craze (sous-vide is gently poaching in vacuum-sealed bags) legitimized Seal-a-Meal's use by chefs and hipsters alike (neither of whom, I can assure you, feeds a family of five after working a busy day cooking for an editorial staff of seven).

A few weeks ago, a box of the new caffeinated Snickers Charged arrived on the desk of our fantastic features intern, Nick Pandolfi. Preferring to consume caffeine only in my coffee, I asked him to test it out and record his reactions. (We never said it was easy being an F&W intern.) Here is his full report:

"While it might seem repulsive to food snobs who only get their organic chocolate from Fair Trade farmers in South America and their coffee from small batch roasters in Seattle, Snickers Charged sounded brilliant to me since I'm often in need of a lift but strapped for cash and time. I ate a whole candy bar and waited for the buzz to kick in.

The thing is, I don’t usually drink a cup of coffee in less than 2 minutes and I never combine it with 25 grams of sugar (more than 2 tablespoons). Shortly after downing the Snickers (which didn’t have the metallic chemical taste I was expecting—just plain chocolate, caramel, nougat and peanut goodness), my heartbeat began to accelerate. Within minutes, my hands were trembling and my stomach was a bit upset, but I was typing about twice as fast as I usually do.  

The combined sugar and caffeine crash was about as unpleasant as the spike, and an hour later, as the trembling subsided, I found myself needing another boost. Next time I pick up a Snickers, I think I'll stick to decaf."

I've always been a coffee drinker, so on the rare occasion that I make myself a cup of tea, I simply boil the water on top of the stove. When I visit with my mother-in-law, an inveterate tea-drinking Anglophile, I must confess that I lust after her electric tea kettle. It works so quickly there's time to make tea and go to the loo during a commercial break. But my kitchen-counter space is limited—I can't squander it on a single-purpose appliance, one that would at best get occasional usage. All that changed when I discovered a world of applications: topping off a pot of boiling pasta, soup or stew; making soup/oatmeal/rice; soaking dried fruit/mushrooms/beans; blanching vegetables; peeling peaches or tomatoes...anything that requires boiling water and a heat-proof bowl. Now, as soon as I start cooking, I put the kettle on.

Always on the quest for another creative way to sneak chicken into my family's diet, I wondered how I'd survived motherhood thus far without ever having made chicken cacciatore, and as an Italian, no less. Yet here I was again—confronted with chicken and less than an hour to prepare it. That meant no time to mince garlic, chop onions and slice peppers or even sauté them. Then I remembered how Mexican-style tomato sauces are made: Garlic, onion and peppers go into the blender with canned tomatoes, then the whole mess gets simmered together. The result isn't as complex as with multi-layered cooking but delicious none the less. Here's how simple it was:

Chicken Cacciatore
active: 20 min; total: 1 hr 5 min
5 servings

1 small onion, quartered
2 large garlic cloves
1/2 red bell pepper
One 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock or low-sodium broth
5 drumsticks
5 chicken thighs
Salt and freshly ground pepper
All-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 bay leaf
1 rosemary sprig
Buttered noodles or crusty bread for serving

1.    Preheat the oven to 375°. In a blender, combine the onion, garlic, bell pepper, canned tomatoes and chicken broth and puree until smooth.
2.    Season the chicken with salt and pepper and dust with flour. In a large, deep ovenproof skillet, melt the butter in the oil. Add the chicken and cook over moderately high heat until brown and crusty all over, about 12 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate. Add the sauce to the pan and cook, scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom. Add the bay and rosemary, season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Nestle the chicken into the sauce. Transfer to the oven and roast uncovered until the chicken is tender and the sauce is reduced by about half, 45 minutes.
3.    Discard the bay and rosemary and serve with noodles or crusty bread.