Daily Archives: August 31, 2007

Chocolate Gelato!

From Wikipedia:
Gelato, or the plural Gelati, is Italian ice cream made from milk and sugar, combined with other flavorings. The gelato ingredients (after an optional pasteurization) are frozen while stirring to break up ice crystals as they form. Like high end ice cream, gelato generally has less than 35% air – resulting in a dense and extremely flavourful product.

Gelato is the generic Italian for ice cream. The same word is commonly used in English speaking countries to refer to ice cream that is prepared in the Italian way. “Gelato” is an Italian word for “frozen” and comes from the Italian gelare, meaning “to freeze.”

Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? I plan on making this tomorrow, or sometime this Labor Day Weekend using my ice cream maker! I’ll be sure to blog about it and let all my readers know how much I like it. Here’s a recipe I found:

Chocolate Gelato
2 eggs, slightly beaten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder .175 ml
3/4 cup sugar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 ml
1 cup milk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250 ml
1 1/2 cups whipping cream . . . . . . . .375 ml
In a saucepan combine cocoa and sugar.
Stir until well mixed. Gradually add milk,
making a paste. Whisk in eggs. Place over
medium heat and cook stirring constantly
until steaming, about 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in
cream. Chill thoroughly. Freeze according to ice cream maker’s instructions.
Makes about 1Qt/.9L.

I’ll admit, I’ve never had gelato, that I can remember, so it’ll be a different treat for me and my family to try.

I’ll be attending the ACFW conference soon, and I notice people have mentioned a chocolate party. I also recall from attending RWA conferences that romance writers are always talking about chocolate. What’s the correlation between romance writing and chocolate?

Who knows?

I enjoy it and my family enjoys it. I’ve always liked chocolate, even before I became a writer!

Cecelia Dowdy

Meet My Sister Tess By Kristin Billerbeck

Meet My Sister Tess by Kristin Billerbeck
H S #329
Publisher: Heartsong Presents/Barbour

ISBN: 9781577485544

Binding: Mass Market

From Heartsong Presents website:
Clark is everything Tess Ellison thinks she wants in a husband. He is stable, a good provider, the kind of man who can allow Tess to fulfill her mother’s dying wish: that her mentally-handicapped brother, Robby, will never be put into an institution. Robby loves to introduce his sister to every new person he meets, including Greg Wheaton, the new social worker in town. It is obvious that Robby is encouraging Tess and Greg to become friends. Soon Tess is forced to admit a marriage of amiable partenership may not be for her. Can she trust God to keep her mother’s dying wish and give her the man she loves?

I thought this book was a cute enjoyable read. I felt that the depiction of Robby was extremely realistic, and I could imagine a lot of the events happening as such with an autistic man. I would recommend this book to read. However, I just wanted to point out that since this title is so old the writing style is a lot different than Billerbeck’s later works.

It was so different that it almost seemed like it was written by a different author! I’m thinking it appears that way because Billerbeck’s Heartsongs are written in the third person, and as far as I know, her titles released over the last few years are all written in first person. Plus, since she doesn’t really do straight-up category-style romances anymore, that might be why the writing style is so drastically different. I enjoyed this book, and I wish Billerbeck would write more category-styled romances. I enjoy her more recent titles too, but I enjoy her older stuff just as much.

When I was browsing in a Christian bookstore awhile back, I noticed the following Billerbeck title on the shelf:

From the decription, it seems like an enjoyable read. I didn’t buy it, because I have books at home that I haven’t read yet, and I am living on a budget! Maybe I’ll get around to buying it and reading it in the future. I’d be interested in seeing some comments from anybody who has read either of these books.

Cecelia Dowdy