Strawberry Gelato Recipe

gelato

As I mentioned yesterday, each summer I begin my Saturdays at my local farmer’s market, and during most of the early summer (and sometimes longer if I’m lucky) my favorite stand has the biggest and sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted. The trouble with strawberries is that they spoil so quickly, so I try to transform them into strawberry gelato by Saturday afternoon.

This is a recipe I got from a gelato class which was taught by the owner of Portland’s best gelato shop, Mio Gelato (the best gelato outside Italy). I’ve modified it, mainly because I’m lazy, but it still turns out brilliantly. The best part is that there is no cooking necessary, so it’s easy to whip this up even in hot weather when you don’t feel like going near the stove. My modifications are underneath the recipe as I first learned it.

Gelato di Fragola
Strawberry Gelato

Ingredients

1 lb. fresh strawberries
12 oz. granulated sugar, about 1.5 cups
1.5 cup cold whipping cream
1.5 cup cold water
dash of lemon juice (only if fruit isn’t “bright” enough)

Directions

Clean and cut washed berries into quarters, or just smaller pieces.
Put berries, sugar and water into a blender or food processor and blend until liquid and smooth. (This is also where you’ll add lemon juice if necessary.)
Whip the cream until slightly thickened - like the consistency of buttermilk.
Combine the cream with the strawberry mixture and mix thoroughly until blended.
Freeze as indicated by the manufacturer of your ice cream maker.

Notes & Modifications

This works for stone fruits (like peaches) as well, but with stone fruits you always need to add a dash of lemon juice to the mixture. I’ve also used this basic recipe for raspberries and blueberries - you just have to keep tasting the mixture to get the right blend of tart (lemon juice) and sweet (sugar).
The mixture will lose a little of its sweetness when it goes through the freezing process, so if the finished product seems a bit too sweet to you, that’s a good thing.
I don’t bother whipping the cream, I just pour it from the container into the blender with everything else and blitz it all together.
I add a few teaspoons or so of vodka to the mixture (at the same time I add lemon juice) so that it doesn’t freeze quite so hard. If you don’t add vodka, you’ll just need to pull it out of the freezer 10 or so minutes before you want to scoop it so it has time to soften a bit.
To make sure the mixture freezes really well, I do all the blitzing in the blender and then stick the mixture into the fridge for a few hours to make sure it’s nice and cold before it goes into the ice cream maker.

And that’s it! No cooking - it couldn’t be easier. And it’ll work with pretty much any fruit, you’ll just need to adjust the sweet/sour ratio as you go - just keep tasting it. And if you’re dealing with a fruit that has seeds or skin, then you’ll need to strain the fruit mixture (before adding sugar/water/etc.) unless you don’t care about the skin or seeds in the final product. The straining part can be a pain, so I generally just stick to the fruits that don’t require straining, but when I’ve taken the trouble to do it - with the raspberry in particular - the result is simply divine.

One additional note - if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still make homemade ice cream. The machines do a fantastic and effortless (for you, at least) job of aerating the ice cream, but you can do an acceptable job without one, too. Just pour the chilled mixture into an airtight container and put it in your freezer. Take it out every so often (half-hour intervals or less, depending on how much it’s freezing between the times you take it out) and give it a really good stir. Then pop it back into the freezer. Keep doing this until it’s pretty frozen.

Good luck with your creations, and let me know how they turn out!