Alina Niemi

Alina Niemi loves food so much, it's no wonder her first book is a cookbook. After getting an ice cream machine, she looked for more vegan ice cream recipes. But most of them contained expensive or hard-to-find ingredients. So she made her own recipes.

Since she likes unusual flavor combinations, she played around with tropical fruits, such as papaya and lilikoi (passion fruit) and Asian ingredients, such as kinako and azuki beans. The resulting recipes appear in her book, The New Scoop: Recipes for Dairy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream in Unusual Flavors (Plus Some Old Favorites.)

No ice cream cookbook would be complete without recipes for Mocha Almond Fudge, Rich Chocolate, or Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Creams, so those are included too. But there are also Chocolate Curry, Lavender Chocolate, Strawberry Basil Balsamic, and Strawberry Rose Ice Creams.

And no, she didn't gain weight writing the book. She was already overweight before then. Her current favorite flavor is Papaya Frozen Yogurt (page 151.)