Gelato

So this isn’t really meant to be a food blog, but I figure I can have it do double-duty and type up another recipe to share:  a chocolate gelato recipe that I was given many, many years ago but never tried until now.

I had purchased an ice-cream maker at Aldi a couple years ago, but was always scared away by the copious amounts of cream and large amounts of work in many of the recipes I found (and I’d love to make a raspberry gelato, but that’s a lot of work to get rid of the seeds!), for an end result that’s not really any better than store-bought.

But this recipe’s different — it’s a true gelato, made with milk and egg yolks, rather than cream, in which “gelato” truly means the authentic distinction and not just “ice cream so good we give it a snooty name.”  And it’s not that hard and the taste is so much richer than your Breyer’s or Edy’s, and I’m too cheap to buy Haagen Daaz (even though this gelato isn’t particularly low-cost, it’s at least fun to make).

Here’s the basic recipe:

4 egg yolks
3 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate bar
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 oz cocoa powder
2 cups milk
2 Tbsp sugar

Beat the egg yolks with a whisk.  Gradually add 2/3 cup sugar.  in saucepan, bring milk to a boil, remove from heat.  When slightly cooled, very slowly add to egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly and quickly, being careful not to curdle the eggs.  Melt chocolate in a double boiler and stir until smooth and silky.  Pour into custard mixture and blend.  Add cocoa powder and mix well. Pour into larger saucepan, place over medium heat (do not boil) and stir until mixture thickens slightly.  In another saucepan, heat the 2T sugar with 2T water until a caramel is formed.  Add this to the custard and blend well.  Cool about 1 1/2  hours and then add to ice cream maker.

My comments:

So, for starters, the original recipe says to use “very good chocolate” — but I’m a firm believer in using just plain chocolate.  I started with a 70% cocoa bar, some cheap brand on sale for $1.50 at Valli, but I think that was really too dark, as for my second try I just used a plain “dark chocolate” bar from Aldi, and it turned out even better.  Also note that 3.5 oz is 100 grams.

The stirring until thickened was a bit tricky — the first time it took forever (I kept an eye on it with a thermometer and it was at about 175 – 180 when it thickened); the second time it did start to boil because it heated up much more quickly than I expected, but it didn’t seem to do any harm.

I couldn’t figure out the caramel part — the first time I burnt everything, and the second try I just ended up with recrystallized sugar.  So I gave up, and just added an extra 2 tablespoons of sugar to the mixture.  Then I tasted it and it still didn’t seem sweet enough, so I added to 2 tbsp. more.

It took much longer than 1 1/2 hours to cool in the fridge (do they really mean cooling by putting it in the freezer?).   And it never really got super thick in the ice cream maker — I scurried to get it in the freezer to avoid it melting when I deemed it done enough, and I think it turned out fine in the end, but I don’t know if I failed in ice cream making, or if gelato recipes just don’t get very thick.