Bi-Rite Creamery's Secrets Revealed | San Francisco

Just like that, we have been liberated from the line.

Bi-Rite Creamery's cookbook, Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones ($25), debuts today, and between the covers are all of the shop's secrets. In the generous spirit pervading the Bi-Rite enterprise, the Creamery's owners have given away the family jewels.

There's the recipe for the famous salted-caramel ice cream; you can make a whole quart of it at home with only five ingredients and these strongly worded instructions: "Take action the very instant your caramel reaches the desired color."

There's a recipe for cones, and a paper template for making an ice-cream-cone mold out of cardboard. Perhaps best of all is the recipe for the Creamery's superlative hot fudge, the kind made with cocoa powder plus bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate (click here for the recipe), which turns chewy when it hits ice cream.

In about half the time it takes to reach the front of the Creamery line on a warm afternoon, you could be well on your way to finishing a batch of peanut brittle, lemon gingersnaps or tangerine granita.

Bi-Rite Creamery, 3692 18th St. (at Guerrero St.); 415-626-5600 or biritecreamery.com