#44 - Stracciatella Gelato

Remember how we told you our Villa friends came over tonight? Well, we had to feed them dessert, and those cookie bars would be perfect if they had something creamy to go with them.

Homemade gelato anyone?

Stracciatella Gelato

From Bon Appetit
Stracciatella is kind of the Italian version of chocolate chip ice cream, so in the ingredients, we needed bittersweet chocolate to get those swirly chunks. Also, we decided to break the bank with this recipe and use real vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract.
Making the gelato is similar to making ice cream, where you start off making a custard that will need to be chilled before churning. The main difference is the fat content as gelato has more milk than heavy cream.
While the custard is chilling, we had time to get the chocolate ready. We melted the bittersweet chocolate chips down and made this super delicious looking sauce.
Then while churning the gelato, we poured that stuff in in little batches, and watched as it froze into thin strips of chocolate.
Back in the freezer for a bit, and we're done!
This gelato was pretty tasty, and it went perfectly with those pecan cookie bars. The chocolate swirl was pretty neat, and we think we might have to steal that technique for a creamier ice cream in the future.
If you made the cookie bars, make this to go with it:

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, chilled
• 1/3 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
• 2 tsp vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Heat milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
2. Scrape in the seeds from the vanilla bean to the milk, and add the bean.
3. Bring milk to a simmer, whisking often.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, yolks, and salt for 1 minute, until well-blended.
5. Gradually whisk the hot milk into the yolk mixture.
6. Return to saucepan and stir over medium-low heat until the custard thickens, about 5 minutes.
7. Strain custard into a medium bowl.
8. Stir in the chilled cream and cover.
9. Chill custard until cold, at least 2 hours.
10. Stir chocolate and oil in a small saucepan over low heat until melted, and let cool.
11. Prepare your ice cream maker for use.
12. Pour chilled mixture into your ice cream maker and stir for 15 minutes (on Speed 1 of your KitchenAid).
13. During the last 30 seconds of churning, slowly add all but 1 tsp melted chocolate to the ice cream.
14. Transfer to a bowl and drizzle the remaining chocolate over gelato in zigzag lines.
15. Return ice cream to freezer for several hours before serving.