Vanilla Gelato

Step 1

Into a medium saucepan, add the milk, cream, skimmed milk powder, glucose, beans from a fresh vanilla pod and 50g of the caster/white sugar.

Step 2

Stir the remaining 55g of sugar into a small dish with the ice cream stabiliser and set to one side.

Step 3

Place the pan over a medium heat and cook it until it reaches 45C/113F on a digital thermometer. Immediately tip in the egg yolks and sugar/stabiliser mixture and continue to whisk until it reaches 85C/189F on a digital thermometer.

Step 4

Immediately pour it into a medium bowl and blend with a hand blender for 30 seconds.

Step 5

Place the bowl in a sink full of ice water and stir occasionally, for about 15-20 minutes. In the gelato books it will tell you to cool it to around 4C/39F but that is tough at home so once it is around 12-15C that is fine! Cover the surface of the mixture with clingfilm and refrigerate it overnight so that the gelato base can mature. This will improve the texture and taste.

Step 6

The next day, if you are using an ice cream/gelato machine with a chilling unit, turn it on about 15 minutes ahead of time to get the bowl cold. If you are using a stand mixer freezer bowl there is no need to do this - although note you will not get the best texture with one of these as they cannot chill the gelato to the correct temperature.

Step 7

Blend the gelato base one more time and then pour it into your machine to churn. It will take anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on your machine.

Step 8

The gelato should be a scoop-able texture but depending on your machine, may need to go back into the freezer for a few hours to firm up. Scoop it into a container and freeze it. Ideally this needs to be churned and served on the same day so up to 6 hours in the freezer is long enough. As the gelato freezes, the sugars begin to re-crystallise which makes the gelato go icy. As the recipe has a stabiliser in it along with skimmed milk powder, we are doing everything we can to trap as much water too, but eventually the texture will deteriorate.

Step 9

Note - if you are using a different fat percentage of cream, say 36%, there is no need to adjust the recipe. It will just have slightly more fat in compared to 32% so will be a slight difference in texture/mouthfeel.