Roasted Apricot Gelato

I love this time of year, when the ice cream maker comes out of the cupboard and starts to work overtime, and beautiful summer berries and stone fruit are available in abundance.  Now I make and enjoy homemade ice creams and sorbets all year round, but this is the time when I really want to go to town churning out tubs full of luscious, deep flavoured, fruity gelato.

A bowlful of apricots I had on hand this week were destined for exactly this treatment I decided.  I actually used slightly under-ripe fruit because I wanted that little bit of tartness, but I was also looking for the depth of flavour that comes from fully ripe fruit, so achieved that by roasting the apricots first with a little brown sugar and butter.  The brown sugar and butter more or less turned into caramel, and the apricots really intensified in flavour.  Then it was just a matter of blitzing the roasted apricots to a puree.  This is a really good way of preserving apricots for use in ice cream throughout the year - simply freeze the pureed fruit in a snaplock bag in batches ready to whip out any time you want to make ice cream.  You can also do the same thing with nectarines and peaches.

I hope you'll give this a go - it's pretty darn good.  If you fancy a little extra texture, you could try serving this with crumbled amaretti biscuits sprinkled over the top.  Don't have an ice cream machine - take my advice and invest in one - I promise you it will be worth it.  I shared this with my good friends, Cliff & Clare, who came to stay on the weekend - they were so smitten Cliff was thinking that he would get Clare an ice cream maker for her birthday!

Roasted Apricot Gelato Recipe

Makes approximately 1 litre

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

6x medium-large fresh apricots

brown sugar

butter

6x large egg yolks, free range

1/2 cup sugar

325 ml (11 fl oz) milk

100 ml (3.5 fl oz) cream

1x vanilla bean

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Cut apricots in half - remove and discard the stones.  Place apricots cut side up in an ovenproof dish that is just big enough to fit them quite snugly.  Sprinkle each apricot half with a little brown sugar, and top each with a small knob of butter.

Place in hot oven and roast until the apricots have softened and started to collapse, and the sugar and butter have merged with the oozing fruit juices to become almost the consistency of caramel sauce.

This will take about 30 minutes, and it is helpful to baste the fruit with the juices half way through.  Allow to cool completely then, using a food processor or stick blender, blitz to a puree.

Place egg yolks in a medium bowl with half of the sugar, and whisk until pale.  Set aside.

Put the remaining sugar in a medium sized, heavy bottomed pan, with the milk and cream.  Split the vanilla bean down the middle and scrape out the seeds, adding both the seeds and the bean to the pan with the milk and cream.  Set pan over moderate heat and bring just to a boil.  Remove from heat immediately.

Now, whisking constantly, slowly pour about half of the milk and cream mixture into the egg mixture.  Then return all of this mixture to the remaining milk and cream in the saucepan - keep whisking constantly as you go.

Return pan to a low heat, and stir constantly until the mixture begins to thicken.  A good indication that it's ready is when all the frothy bubbles from the surface disappear.  Also the mixture will coat the back of a spoon, and when you run your finger through the mixture the edges of the mixture will not run back together.

Remove from the heat and immediately strain through a sieve into a clean bowl set over an ice bath.  Keep stirring until the mixture has cooled completely.

Now stir the cooled apricot puree into the custard, add the vanilla bean which was strained out back into the custard, and refrigerate for 24 hours.  Now remove the vanilla bean (do not throw away), and churn the custard in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.  Serve straight away or freeze for several hours to firm up.

What to do with that vanilla bean?  There's plenty of flavour left in that bean so don't discard it.  Rinse thoroughly under cold water, then set on a paper towel on your kitchen window sill until dry.  Then put into your jar of caster sugar to have a constant supply of vanilla flavoured sugar.

This will be my submission to Sweet New Zealand, inspired by Alessandra Zecchini and hosted this month by the lovely Arfi at HomeMadeS.

Raspberry Gelato Recipe - Cooking Italy 9

It's still the "fag end" of winter here, and we are still being subjected to fairly regular polar blasts coming straight off the Antarctic;  the mountains are still covered in snow and, despite the emergence of daffodils and some early blossom, warm, sunny spring weather still seems a little way off.  But for all that, no matter how cold it is outside, the dessert of choice for me is still usually something frozen - give me a bowl of sorbet or ice cream over an apple pie any day!  I infinitely prefer, no matter what the weather, a cold dessert to a hot one.  There is, however, one notable exception - my all-time-most-favourite dessert (the one I would ask for if I was on death row, heaven forfend) - and that is my Dad's steamed pudding.  There is just something about a dish which is made with a father's love that tastes better than anything else on earth.  (Note to self:  see if I can get Dad to show me how to make it and share the recipe, so that I can share it with you.)

But I have digressed.  Such is my passion for frozen desserts that I always have several tubs, in varying flavours, in the freezer at any one time.  What's more, that passion seems to have grown immeasurably since I discovered how ridiculously easy it is to make your own.  Not only is making your own sorbets and ice creams incredibly easy, you also know exactly what is in them - no artificial ingredients (thickeners, stabilisers, emulsifiers, things you can't pronounce - ick!) - just beautiful, fresh, natural ingredients (fresh, seasonal fruit, free-range eggs, cream, milk, maybe some vanilla).  Little wonder that home-made ice creams and sorbets taste soooooo good!

So that I can enjoy my frozen desserts all year round, I freeze fruit during the summer for turning into sorbets and ice creams during the winter.  I poach or roast fruits like apricots, peaches and nectarines, then bag them up in whatever quantity I need for a batch of ice cream, taking care to note on the bag what sugar went into the preparation of the fruit.  Berries I simply freeze, free-flow, and then bag.  I do all this, rather than making big batches of the ice cream or sorbet when the fruit is in season, because frozen desserts don't really keep so well much beyond about 3 months - it's not really that they "go off" so much, but they tend to get icy and the texture changes.  So I find it is better to freeze the fruit, and make batches of dessert as I need them.

Given my love for frozen desserts, I was very excited that one of our assignments this month for the Cooking Italy group was gelato - any flavour we liked, using this recipe from PickYourOwn.org.  Immediately, my imagination started to run wild - I had some roasted peaches in the freezer, and some amaretti biscuits leftover from some Sweet Potato Ravioli I had made a couple of weeks ago (post for that coming soon - promise), so Roasted Peach and Amaretti Gelato sounded pretty darn good to me.  Sadly the roasted peaches, turned out to be poached peaches, and since they were already in a vanilla-infused sugar syrup I decided to turn them into a sorbet instead, rather than risk upsetting the sugar-balance of the gelato (sugar doesn't freeze, so playing around with the quantity of sugar will affect how soft or firm your ice cream becomes).  So instead I opted to use up a bag of frozen raspberries from the freezer for a Raspberry Gelato.  I do still have roasted apricots and roasted nectarines in the freezer so they will get their turn next!

Now, before I go on, a word about ice cream makers.  I know that I have told you this before, but if you don't already own an ice cream maker, go and get one - contrary to what you may think, you don't have to spend a fortune.  You can get one for as little as about $40 (which will do a perfectly good job), and then the frozen confections which will come out of your kitchen will be limited only by your imagination.  I keep the bowl of my ice cream maker in the freezer at all times, so that I am always good to go when the urge takes me.

So what, you might ask, is the difference between gelato and ice cream - the best explanation I have found is this one given by David Lebovitz - but the simplest facts that I have been able to discern from a variety of sources is that gelato generally has less air and less fat than a traditional ice cream, resulting in a product which is more dense in texture and in which the flavour is not masked by the taste and texture of fat coating the palate.

This gelato is as simple as making an egg custard, pureeing some fresh fruit, and then letting the machine do the work - churn away.  The result is lusciously fruity, and with a greater ratio of milk to cream is not overly rich.  Incidentally this recipe uses 8 egg yolks, and in case you were wondering what to do with 8 egg whites (they can be frozen), I can recommend either Nigella's Prodigious Pavlova or Giada's Egg White Frittata with Lox and Arugula, both of which just happen to call for, yes you guessed it, 8 egg whites.  Talk about serendipitous!

Raspberry Gelato Recipe

Adapted from recipe on

PickYourOwn.org

Makes approx. 1.5 litres

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

2 cups milk

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup skim milk powder

8 large free-range egg yolks

1 cup cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups raspberries

(if using frozen, thaw first)

Begin by setting up an ice bath - place a 2-quart (2l) bowl in a larger bowl partially filled with ice and water.  Set a strainer over the top of the smaller bowl and pour the cream into the bowl.

Separate the egg yolks into a medium bowl.  The whites can be discarded or set aside for another purpose.  Whisk the yolks until thickened.

Next heat the milk, sugar and powdered milk together in a large saucepan, bringing it to a gentle simmer and stirring to ensure the sugar is completely dissolved.

Remove from heat and gradually pour some of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour.  Then pour the warmed egg yolk and milk mixture back into the saucepan containing the remainder of the milk.

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan with a heat-resistant spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.

Strain the custard into the bowl of cream, and stir over the ice bath until the custard is completely cool.  Add the vanilla extract.  Pour the custard into a jug (that will make pouring into the ice cream maker easier later on).  Cover with cling film, pressing the cling film right down onto the surface of the custard so that the whole surface is covered.  Refrigerate to chill thoroughly - at least about 8 hours, but preferably overnight.

Now you're ready to make ice cream.  Puree the raspberries for a couple of minutes in the food processor or blender, and strain if you prefer to remove the seeds.  Remove custard from the fridge.

Set your ice cream machine churning and pour in the custard followed by the raspberry puree.  (You could mix the custard and fruit together before pouring into your machine, but I found that my churn did a good job of mixing them for me.)  Churn according to manufacturer's instructions, then serve straight from the churn, or freeze for a couple of hours if you prefer a firmer texture.

Visit my Cooking Italy page  to learn more about the group, find links to other participants in the group, and links to all the recipes I have so far contributed.

Interested in making more frozen desserts?  Then, I recommend The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz - you will also find loads of great recipes and information on his website.

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