When we stopped making bread every day, we started making gelato. Lots and lots of gelato in many, many different flavors.
Dominic, the nice Italian man who sold me the gelato machine, also taught us how to make it. He calls it "fun" gelato. That means we spend more time on the fun part (mixing the flavors) and less time on the "not fun" part (cooking the eggs, milk and sugar for the gelato base).
We buy a base (Dominic calls it 'antifreeze' because it keeps the gelato from getting icy), then add milk, sweetener and flavors. We add ganache for chocolate, caramelized condensed milk for dulce de leche, mint syrup for mint chocolate chip, or espresso for coffee and mocha.
Then there the fresh fruits. From strawberries and peaches to cantaloupe to mango, pears and bananas. Add-ins? We put Coldstone Creamery to shame with our own crumbled cookies, brownies, cheesecake, truffles, chocolate chunks, chocolate covered coffee beans, lemon squares and cinnamon rolls. Just to mention a few. After all, we ARE a bakery!
Did I mention liqueurs? Amaretto, Kahlua and Limoncello for starters. We even made coffee-anisette once. Of course we don't use enough to get you drunk (too much alcohol inhibits the freezing process anyway). We're just looking for taste here and often pair the real thing with non-alcoholic flavorings.
We will make any flavor once. Some of our favorites (besides mint chocolate chip) are peanut butter reeces cup (peanut butter with crumbled Reeces cups), banana nut sundae (banana gelato swirled with ganache and toasted pecans), lemon, and caramel toffee crunch (with crumbled toffee).
We also make sorbets. Among the most popular are fresh peach, cantaloupe, kiwi, raspberry-passion fruit, and pear. The pear, made from fresh pear puree has the texture and full flavor of fresh pears, frozen.
Some come on down or call to see what flavors we happen to have. Tell us you read our blog or are a facebook fan and we'll give you a 50% discount on gelato for the rest of 2009!
Just don't ask for vanilla.
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