My recipe involved the end process of an ice cream maker. Mix up the ingredients, add them to the ice cream maker, wait 30 minutes and voila! Gelato. That can't be too hard, can it? It works easy for basic vanilla and chocolate ice cream, so how hard can raspberry gelato be?
I skimmed the recipe (that came with the ice cream maker) and it looked easy enough. I should have probably READ the recipe but you know read, skim; tomayto, tomahto.
I started by pureeing the rasberries in my food processor. That was kind of fun because the colors got darker and darker as I let it go. It actually turned this very pretty dark red color.
"Press raspberry puree through a fine mesh sieve or chinois with a wooden spoon or spatula."
First things first, I looked up "chinois" seeing as how I didn't know what this is...here it is. I don't have either a sieve or a chinois so I tried cheesecloth. Let's talk about how pushing anything through a cheesecloth with a wooden spoon doesn't work. It is ridiculous, messy and completely ineffective.
Also I learned that raspberry puree does not push through a cheesecloth. Who knew?Being my creative self, I went to the garage and found a role of screen and cut off a piece to use for this task. After washing the screen, I had a frustrating experience trying to transfer the puree from the cheesecloth onto a screen. Once again, ridiculous and messy, but somewhat effective as I did wind up with about three-fourths of the puree on the screen. The rest was on me, the island and on the floor.
It actually looked like a scene out of a bad horror movie - like I just made some sort of animal sacrifice on my kitchen table.
I did not have any more raspberries left and was not going to the store. I was doing laundry and in my bath robe.
So I have decided that pushing a puree through a screen with a wooden spoon is only a good idea in theory and I don't think anyone knew what they were talking about when they gave this direction. I choose to squeeze the screen, the same way I attempted to squeeze through the cheese cloth. This actually did work although it stained my hands.
Next step: "put raspberry puree aside" (thank God).
After that, "heat cream and sugar so the sugar dissolves." Easy enough, I have done this before. My handicap is that I have an electric stove so there is no such thing as turning down heat. One burner is on low and the other is on medium. When done with the medium heat, you simply change burners.
Next, while whisking 3 egg yolks "until thickened" add 1/4 of a cup of the "hot cream-sugar mixture and whisk until blended." Trying to whisk and measure this out at the same time is a bit tricky. If you measure it out ahead of time, it will cool down. The recipe says "hot" and I like to try to do what the recipe says...
"Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan;" (I'd like to know what the point of the previous step was anyway) "increase heat to medium. Stir the mixture constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture is thickened like a custard sauce and registers 180 degrees."
This seemed easy enough and the mixture did set up like a custard, I was beginning to feel successful.
"Stir in remaining ingredients [minus raspberry puree]. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer." Crap! Back to that again and THIS TIME it's 180 degrees! I was forced, out of respect for my skin, to push it through with a wooden spoon. This was done poorly at best and by the time I was done, I am sure it was cooled to room temperature.
"...stir in reserved raspberry puree and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate at least 6 hours before continuing."
I can't tell you how anticlimactic it is to work all this way through a recipe to find out that I have to give up for 6 hours. Giving up for 6 hours made me not want to start again.
And I didn't.
It DID say, "at least" 6 hours so I figured 24 wouldn't hurt anything.
And it actually didn't. Today I poured the mixture into the icecream maker and 30 minutes later, voila! GELATO!
It looked like this. I wish I could post a picture, I so badly want to post a picture! But, my computer is still sick.
After finding the gelato picture, I also found this blog. Whoever wrote the directions for the ice cream maker must have a vendetta against the end user. Because the woman at this blog seems to know what she's doing and didn't have all those crazy steps.
All in all, it came out great, the flavor is really concentrated like gelato is supposed to be; so 4-5 spoon fulls is really all a person needs. A refreshing treat for a summer day!
(But I don't see myself doing this again any time soon.)
