The ultimate frozen dessert book: a complete guide to gelato, sherbet, granita, and semifreddo, plus frozen cakes, pies, mousses, chiffon cakes, and more, with hundreds of ways to customize every recipe to your own taste

259 Pages·2005·0.7 MB·English

by  Bruce Weinstein

A Complete Guide to Gelato, Sherbet,
Granita, and Semifreddo, Plus Frozen
Cakes, Pies, Mousses, Chiffon Cakes, and
More, with Hundreds of Ways to Customize
Every Recipe to Your Own Taste
T
he
Frozen
U
ltimate
Dessert
B
ook
Bruce Weinstein
and
Mark Scarbrough
To Jane Friedman. We adore you, too.
Our melting thanks to
KitchenAid for a PRO LINE Frozen Dessert Maker; Kim Roman, our Saatchi
Santa; Brian Maynard at KitchenAid, our appliance amigo; Harriet Bell, our fabulous
editor; Lucy Baker, our forgiving timekeeper and mistake-eraser; Susan Ginsburg,
our first-rate agent; Rachel Specter, our now lamentably gone enabler; Emily
Saladino, learning the enabler’s art; Beth Shepard, our media mogul; Pat Adrian, a
constant friend; Diane Aronson, a production genius; Leah Carlson-Stanisic, Jessica
Peskay, and Karen Lumley, three production graces; Elizabeth Ackerman and Sarah
Maya Gubkin, design gurus; Virginia McRae, our top-notch copy editor; Carrie
Bachman, Jonathan Schwartz, and Bobbilyn Jones, publicity mavens all;
Robert Steinberg, our chocolate cherub
Contents

Introduction
1
Gelato
3
Sherbet
105
Granita
133
Semifreddo
157
Frozen Cakes, Pies, Mousses, and More
180
Source Guide
241
Index
243
About the Author
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction

In this compendium of frozen desserts,
you’ll find everything from an
over-the-top nougat semifreddo to an easy, refreshing raspberry granita, perfect for a hot af-
ternoon. You’ll find dozens of gelati with hundreds of ways to customize them, as well as all
sorts of frozen cakes, pies, and mousses. But what you won’t find are traditional ice creams or
sorbets. Those are in a companion volume, The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, the book that started
our series of Ultimate books: party drinks, candy, shrimp, brownies, potatoes, muffins, and
chocolate cookies. Now, in this ninth volume, we’ve come full circle, back to where it all
started: our love affair with cold, sweet treats.
What is it about frozen desserts that makes them so irresistible? Stand in line at an ice
cream shop and you feel a camaraderie with those around you. You smile, you wait (patiently
or not), you even chitchat with complete strangers. (You certainly don’t act like that when you
notice someone in a restaurant eating a piece of the same pie you’ve ordered.) Maybe, for a
brief moment, we all revert to being kids waiting for cones. Maybe it’s the singular strangeness
of eating something cold and creamy—isn’t food supposed to be hot from the fire? Or maybe
we never really get over the thrill of frozen desserts.
The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book is divided into five chapters, each covering a different
treat:
• Gelato, an Italian frozen custard, a favorite of ice cream aficionados.
Most adore its velvety texture, a rich mixture of whole milk and egg
yolks.
• Sherbet, originally a Middle Eastern refresher, made without eggs—just
milk, sugar, and a fruit puree. Creamy, yet refreshing, it’s perfect for an
evening out on the deck.
• Granita, an icy treat made without eggs or milk, just sugar and fruit—
light, cold, and filled with flavor.
• Semifreddo, that most decadent of Italian frozen desserts: a marshmal-
lowy “cake” that’s frozen in a loaf pan and cut into slices.
• Frozen pies, mousses, terrines, and ice cream cakes, those stun-
ning bring-it-to-the-pot-luck or make-it-ahead-for-the-dinner-party
desserts. Many are made with gelati from this book—or with store-
bought ice cream.
As in the other Ultimate books, we list the recipes in each chapter alphabetically:Almond
Gelato, Anise Gelato, Apricot Gelato, and so on. We use the English name except where the
Italian proves untranslatable (Bacio Gelato, for example). After many recipes, we include ways
to customize them to your taste: add a splash of extract, a little fresh juice, some dried fruit, or
a handful of chocolate chips, and you have a dessert that’s utterly your own. In the end, it’s all
about making what you want—and we all want as many frozen desserts as we can make.
2 The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book
Gelato

Gelato is ice cream without the cream
—just whole milk and egg yolks. In
fact, it’s dense and smooth because of what it doesn’t have: cream and egg whites. These read-
ily whip up when beaten; they even turn airy when just stirred repeatedly. Egg yolks? Far less
so—unless they’re part of a custard base as it begins to freeze in your ice cream machine. As it
does, the yolks trap a tiny bit of air between their crowded cell walls—and voilà, the differ-
ence: a denser consistency, creamier despite the lack of cream.
What else is missing in gelati (that is, the plural of gelato)? Thickeners like flour, cornstarch,
or gelatin. They’re often necessary in standard ice cream because of the inclusion of those
loosy-goosy egg whites and the relatively small ratio of egg yolks to sugar. Gelato, rich in egg-
yolk protein, needs no such help.
Gelato begins with an egg custard—a sugary mixture that’s cooked until the proteins build
a coherent structure among the components. Technically speaking, then, gelato is frozen cus-
tard. But it’s not necessarily American-style frozen custard, which has plenty of whole eggs,
not just the yolks.
More often than not, American-style frozen custard also contains cream. In fact, much of
what’s sold as gelato in North America has a high cream content, sometimes even higher than
standard ice cream. We suspect that’s because egg yolks are high-priced and cholesterol-rich.
If we were to cut the egg yolks in half in our gelati recipes and replace what’s missing with
cream, we’d end up with a lower-cholesterol product, but it wouldn’t be Italian gelato. It
would be some strange hybrid, an ice cream with more egg yolks.
Still and all, the gelati in this book do indeed contain a little cream. Here’s why—the
whole milk sold in the United States is not as rich as that sold in Italy. Ours has just over 3
percent butterfat, sometimes a smidge more in states like California that legislate a slightly
higher fat content. By contrast, Italian whole milk has around 3.7 percent butterfat. That may
well be the lowest in the European Union—France’s runs around 4.1 percent; Denmark’s,
more than 4.3 percent—but the difference matters a great deal. So homemade gelato made
with U.S. whole milk needs a “fat compensation” for that real Italian taste—thus, the addi-
tion of a small amount of cream.
But egg whites and cream are minor concerns when compared with something as seem-
ingly innocuous as air. Gelato is supposed to be dense, exceptionally so. Too much air beaten
into the custard must surely be the gravest of culinary indiscretions.
How do you know how much air has gotten into a frozen custard? Simply measure the
volume of custard you put into the machine, then measure the volume of gelato that comes
out. In professional parlance, the difference is expressed as a percentage increase and called the
“overrun” (that is, the amount over and above the original base).
Most commercial ice cream has a 100 percent overrun. It’s half air; for each tablespoon
of base put into the machine, two tablespoons come out. Premium ice cream has an overrun
below 33 percent; super premium, sold strictly in pints, around 20 percent. But gelato has still
less—traditionally, under 10 percent, often as little as 2 percent. In other words, if you put
4 cups (1 quart) of custard into your machine, you should end up with no more than 41⁄3 cups
gelato (about an 8 percent overrun)—although ideally you should end up with just slightly
more than 1 quart, maybe even just 1 tablespoon more.
The point is this: you want the least amount of air in the custard. To that end, we have
some tips for making authentic gelato every time.
4 The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book