About the Author

Alina Niemi is a writer, illustrator, artist, teacher and musician. Her award-winning vegetarian and vegan recipes have appeared in magazines and books. She loves traveling the world, eating anything vegetarian she can find, and trying to re-create those dishes at home, using products she can get in her home country. Some of the recipes in her vegan ice cream cookbook, The New Scoop: Recipes for Dairy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream in Unusual Flavors (Plus Some Old Favorites) were inspired by dishes she tasted on her travels. She wrote the book after 20 years of making her own ice cream at home, when she bought herself an ice cream maker for Christmas. How much difference could there be? A lot! She loved the smooth, creamy texture and ease of preparation with the ice cream machine. Not to mention the fact that she could whip up a batch in about 40 minutes, start to finish, under the right conditions. (Read about that in the book, too.) But when she went looking for a vegan ice cream cookbook, most of the recipes called for ingredients like soy creamer and arrowroot, or were all made with coconut milk. Besides, she wanted Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream with the kind of chocolate chips you get in store-bought stuff, not hard mini chocolate chips from a bag. After months of testing and several hundred batches of ice cream later, her book was born. (And, to answer your question, no, she didn't gain weight writing the book. She was already fat before then!) She is currently working on children's picture books while trying to maintain her online store and blog. Find recipes at her blog: http: //www.almostveganinparadise.com Get free ice cream recipes and find out more at: http: //www.alinaspencil.com