Lickety, Lickety, About Ice Cream, I'm not Persnickety

You like ice cream? Sam and I sure like ice cream. I think I might even have been born with an ice cream spoon in my mouth. It’s just possible too that I was conceived and/or born in the back of an ice cream truck; ‘course I’d have to verify that with my dearly departed mother. I seem to remember my family having ice cream almost every night when I was growing up. I still eat it most nights after dinner.

I love spumoni ice cream

What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Mine is either rocky road, because chocolate and mini-marshmallows and nuts 

just seem to go together or spumoni. Spumoni is pretty hard to find in most grocery stores. According to a WEB site called the Brown Eyed Baker, spumoni, known in Italy as spumone, is a molded Italian ice cream made with layers of different colors and flavors, and containing a variety of fruits and nuts. The most traditional flavors are chocolate, pistachio and cherry with various nuts and fruit. 

“Traditionally, spumoni is made in a mold that results in a bomb-like dessert with the cherry layer in the center, followed by pistachio, and then covered by chocolate.”

Works for me.

Speaking of Italian ice cream, otherwise known as gelato, it is so much better than traditional American ice cream. What makes gelato different from ice cream?" How does gelato get that soft, elastic texture and slow-to-melt milkiness compared to ice cream's richer, creamier body?

It comes down to three factors: fat, air, and serving temperature.

According to Max Falkowitz, a senior features editor of Serious Eats Newsletters, “American-style ice creams are churned fast and hard to whip in plenty of air (called overrun), which is aided by the high proportion of cream in the base. The most high-end ice creams have an overrun of 25% or so, which means they've increased in volume by 25%; cheaper commercial versions can run from 50% to over 90%, which gives them a light, thin, fast-melting texture that isn't very flavorful (those bites are a quarter to a half air!). Gelato is churned at a much slower speed, which introduces less air into the base—think whipping cream by hand instead of with a stand mixer. That's why it tastes more dense than ice cream—it is.”

Okay. Enough about spumoni. One of my favorite ice cream flavors when I was a kid was tutti-frutti, a concoction of vanilla soft-serve ice cream with candied fruit in it. When I lived in Talmadge, California, my mom would often drive us to the Fosters Freeze in nearby Ukiah to treat us to soft-serve ice cream.

I’m pretty partial to good old Neapolitan too, especially for banana splits, and of course, strawberry. I’m not really into Moose Tracks or Cookie Dough or Wild Mountain Huckleberry or any of those foo-foo flavors. My daughter used to like bubblegum flavor – Yuck! Coffee-flavored ice cream is tolerable, as is pineapple-coconut. Other than that, give me rocky road or spumoni.

Of course Sam isn’t all that particular. Once I’ve finished my ice cream he’ll gladly lick the remains in my bowl no matter what the flavor I’m afraid he has a pretty bad sweet tooth. I know I shouldn’t indulge him, but those boring – where’s-my-share eyes just devastate me. I don’t let him lick chocolate though.

Ever bought an ice cream cone and had the ice cream fall out of the cone onto the street or sidewalk? I’ll bet you most of us have had that happen. It’s even worse when you buy your kid an ice cream cone and the ice cream falls out. Many of us probably have made hand-cranked ice cream. That used to be fun. My step dad could even make ice cream out of snow. Getting to eat lots of ice cream is the best part – if there is a best part – of having your tonsils yanked out.

So, now you know. Sam and I scream for ice cream. Excuse us now while we go get our bowls and spoons.