Plum gelato – Sicilian style
Plums! How I adore these lush, tasty fruits!
More than just delicious and tasty, they also contain impressive amounts of vitamins, fibres and antioxidants so what’s not to like? Where I live, the season was drawing to its inevitable close, but I went shopping and found exactly what I needed:
A batch of really ripe, almost too-soft-to-buy Prunus domestica ‘President’ (as you probably know, very ripe fruit is perfect for fruit ice creams).
The versatile plum lends itself perfectly to American/Philadelphia style-ice cream making and if that interests you, take a look at this recipe from the archives!
Here, however, we will combine the lush fruits with a Sicilian gelato-style ice cream base, using reliable Arrowroot as our starch. Yes, there will be some cooking on the stove, but take heart: Sicilian gelato is typically much more forgiving than traditional Italian/French custard bases: you’ll be alright, I assure you!
Plum gelato, Sicilian style
The easy steps to delicious plum gelato
Begin by washing, cutting, peeling and slicing the plums. Mix with 100 ml (about 0.4 cup) sugar and some lemon juice for contrast and puree in a food processor or by using a mixer. Put aside for now, because the fruit will go into the base only at a later stage. And yes – puree the plums with their skin! That’s where all those nice anti-oxidants are located, so we could not like to miss out on having them in our ice cream, would we?
When making the puree, remember not to exclude the healthy skins of the plums!
Whisk the cold milk together with the Arrowroot starch, making sure that there are no remaining lumps. Set aside for now.
Our magic helper! Sicilian gelato uses starch (here: from Arrowroot) where more typical Italian gelatos would be using eggs. Mix it well with cold milk before adding it to the rest of the hot ice cream base.
Mix the remaining sugar and the cream in a sauce pan. Warm the mixture until steaming hot (not boiling!) on medium heat. Now, we will add the plum puree! Since the addition will lower the temperature of the ice cream base, allow it a few more minutes to heat up again.
Once the ice cream base has returned to “hot”, it is time to blend in the milk-Arrowroot starch mixture and whisk away.
All the other ingredients (save for the optional alcohol) are in. Now, it is time to add the milk/starch mix!
Arrowroot thickens at lower temperatures than corn starch, and does not react well to overheating, so limit the continued cooking to a couple of minutes or so. This will also help protecting the fruit from becoming too “jam-like” (also the reason why I did not add the fruit puree from the very start).
Now, take the base off the heat, whisk well, and add – if using – the Kirsch. Let the mixture cool down: cold water in a sink, with and without ice cubes, is a tried and tested method for quickly bringing the temperature down.
Cooling down in a sink filled with cold water: a good way to quicken up things, eventually allowing the base to continue chilling in your refrigerator.
Once cool enough, put the ice cream base in the refrigerator and let it chill for a couple of hours or so before churning it in your ice cream machine. If you have no ice cream machine, still-freeze the base in your ordinary freezer, following the instructions in this helpful post.
Mmm … Plum gelato!
Plum gelato, Sicilian style
The versatile Sicilian gelato-base works very well together with the lush plums – the flavour is fruity and nice and clearly not too “jam-like” either. The overall impression is also that of a relatively “light” ice cream. No wonder, since the recipe contains a very limited amount of cream (fat) and quite a lot of liquid. In an ice cream, this would normally be difficult to pull off but this is where the starch shines! The Arrowroot powder (leaving no taste of its own either) accomplishes what a “normal” Italian gelato would require a considerable bunch of eggs to do – namely holding the ice cream together, and ensuring a great, smooth structure to our sweet, plummy creation.
Fresh ice cream is almost always incredibly tasty and the plum gelato was no exception – gloriously soft, sweet and tasty, it seduced my taste buds in a second. But somehow (don’t ask me how), I managed to persevered and not eat it all right away. Which is also why I can tell you that the ice cream remains scoopable and nice even after spending a full night in the freezer.
So, if you are able to find any nice plums: Get yourself some, and let this frozen culinary joy impress both yourself and your loved ones!
A scoop before bedtime? Just what the doctor ordered …
Plum gelato - Sicilian style
Ingredients
- About 8-10 plums (about 500 grams, yielding about 500 ml (about good 2 cups) puree)
- 100+ 125 gram (about 0.4 - 0.5 cups) sugar
- 200 ml (about 4/5 cup) milk
- 200 ml (about 4/5 cup) cream
- 5 tablespoons Arrowroot
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- Optional: 1-1 1/2 tablespoons Kirsch
Instructions
- Wash, cut, peel and slice the plums. Mix with 100 ml (about 0.4 cup) sugar and the lemon juice and puree in a food processor or by using a mixer. Set aside for now.
- Whisk the cold milk together with the Arrowroot starch, making sure that there are no remaining lumps. Set aside for now.
- Mix the remaining sugar and the cream in a sauce pan. Warm until steaming hot (not boiling!) on medium heat.
- Add the plum puree and allow the mixture a few more minutes to pick up the overall heat.
- Then, blend in the milk-Arrowroot starch mixture and whisk away. Since Arrowroot thickens at lower temperatures than corn starch and also does not react well to overheating, limit the continued cooking to a couple of minutes or so. This will also protect the fruit from becoming too "jam-like".
- Take the base off the heat, whisk well, and add - if using - the Kirsch. Let the mixture cool down. Refrigerate the base for a couple of hours to chill it further, and churn according to the instructions of your ice cream machine.
- In case you have no ice cream machine, still-freeze the base in your freezer (see the post on how to best make ice cream without an ice cream machine). By the way - like Sicilian gelato in general, this base is perfect for still-freezing!
- After the churning, place the ice cream in a freezer-safe container, cover with plastic film and a lid, and store in the freezer.
Notes
I’m making this right now! Fingers crossed! I’ll let you know how it goes. Really enjoying the website, by the way.
Simon – happy to hear that you enjoy the site! And I hope you’ll like the plum gelato – it has become one of my personal favourite recipes:)
Hi,
I’d like to make mango gelato. Please advise quantity of mango/ mango purée and whatever steps need to be taken in the methodology. Thanks in advance.
Hi Sonia,
You could substitute the plum purée for a roughly equivalent amount of mango purée (about 2 mangoes’ worth). That should do the trick.
Hello Anders and thank you for this amazing website! I have been making many flavours for my kids and neighbours these past few years, and I love my base recipe. However I cannot get it to work properly with fresh fruit purée such as mango. Maybe you can give me a little advice?
– 2 cups heavy cream
– 1 1/2 cups whole milk
– 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
– 2 tablespoons cornstarch
– 2 tablespoons tapioca starch
– 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
I warm up the milk and cream for a while, then mix it little by little into the starches and then incorporate it all. If I want a very fresh mango flavour, would I just add the purée after the churning? I’m afraid all the water will form crystals in the freezer and make it less creamy and smooth. I am willing to try your plum recipe with the arrowroot but I would really love to get this going with my tried and true base that I already love. Thank you for any help you can offer. I have tried this by adding fruit to the base before starches, after starches, and nothing seems to work right.
Hello Bill, and happy that you like the website!
I also tend to strive to maintain the nice freshness of fruit flavours so I understand you well.
While I also understand your wish to hold onto your favourite base recipe, you may have to consider doing a least some tinkering since fruit purées a) tend to contain varying amounts of water and b) varying amounts of sugar. Roughly speaking, my guess is that you may need to up the sugar and/or the starches a bit if you want your recipe to work better here: exactly how much would depend on the fruit purée and the amount of it you plan to put into your ice cream.
Other things you might want to consider when it comes to the “fruit freshness” is to reduce the heated cooking-part: adding fresh fruit to hot bases tend to make them less fresh-tasting/more jam-like. On that note, you could test using only tapioca starch and/or arrowroot instead of cornstarch (the first two require less heating to ‘activate’, and leave little or no aftertaste), and/or adding the fruit purée once the heated base has been taken off the stove to cool down. Going even a step further, you could finish the base without the fruit and then add the (appropriately sweetened) fruit purée during the churning. You could even apply it after the churning, for example by adding it as a ripple to the freshly churned ice cream just before you put it all into the freezer to firm up. Best of luck!
Thanks for the hints Anders. An update – I made half a recipe with my regular base, but using only tapioca starch, and some extra sugar. I got the base almost boiling, then added 100g of cold acerola pulp to the pot. Then starch after that. As you suggested, the tapioca needed less setting time so the fruit did not stay in the heat very long and did not end up with a cooked fruit flavor. Success! Acerola pulp is pretty watery so I think I will add some more starch next time but your ideas were a great help.
Bill, that’s great to hear! 🙂