We made gelato!

Gelato is made with milk instead of cream, and it is a cup (or cone) full of soft deliciousness, eaten with a very small spoon.

And oh, it is so good! Gelato was one of our favorite treats in Italy, and we took our search for the best gelato very seriously (by the way, it’s to be found near the Colosseum in Rome, or near the Duomo in Orvieto!)

It took us several tries to get the formula right once we got home. We have only a very small hand-crank ice cream maker, and I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to achieve that special creamy consistency that gelato has. Our first tries were failures: one recipe was too eggy, one was too icy. But finally we hit on the charm!

The main problem is that the ingredients need to be super-cold to form properly, but it needs to be stored somewhere between the temperature of your fridge and your freezer. The best alternative we came up with is to make it, freeze it briefly, and eat it all in one sitting :-) Thank heavens our machine is small!

The recipe that we ended up liking the best came from AllRecipes.com. It was submitted by OSTAFF1, and came from his or her Italian mother-in-law.

Basic Gelato

2 cups milk (we used 1%)
1 cup heavy cream (we used light cream)
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar

1. In a medium saucepan, mix milk and cream. Warm until foam forms around the edges. Remove from heat.

2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar until frothy. Gradually pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Return mixture to saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture gels slightly and coats the back of the spoon. If small egg lumps begin to show, remove from heat immediately.

3. Pour the mixture through a sieve or fine strainer into a bowl. Cover, and chill for several hours or overnight.

4. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to a sealed container, and freeze until firm. If the gelato is too firm, place it in the refrigerator until it reaches the desired consistency.