Make your own gelato, ice cream or sorbet

I never used to understand gelato. It always seemed like ice cream for pretentious people. But I’ve been tasting it to see. To see if I’m pretentious (jury is still out) and to see if I like gelato. I do like gelato. I really really do. I have found it to be less creamy and less sweet with more authentic flavor (generally speaking of course).

And making it at home? Forget about it. All that rock salt and ice and churning.

But this gelato maker from DeLonghi this looks like a great way to make it. It’s all self regulating – you come up with the flavor profile: pistachio, lavender, cardamom or savory temptations. It’s up to you. Put it in there and let it do the rest. Then when you’re done, the stainless steel container goes in the microwave.

Plus, you can make frozen yoghurt or ice cream or sorbet (sherbet) with it too.

(p.s.: not a bad mother’s day gift)

$300

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Death by Chocolate

This stuff will be the end of me. For sure. Once the seal is cracked, there is no stopping me from eating spoonful after spoonful of rich dark creamy gelato with dark chocolate chips.

My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

You can get it at Whole Foods, Ralph’s or online (though I’m not sure how they ship it…probably like fish, overnight and packed in ice).

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To hell with winter, let's drink shakes

I’ve always wanted one of these. Kind of a malt counter @ home type of thing. But you need to have a good one, like this Waring. And, they’re usually $200 – too rich for my blood.

But…Sur La Table has them on sale now for only $70. It might be hard to think about ice cream with all this incliment weather going ’round.

But come summer, you will be very very happy drinking your frozen vanilla ice cream peanut butter chocolate chip dulce de leche shake (with a splash of Kahlua of course).

Mmm.

$70

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Tubalicious ice cream...

So back in the day, for those (like myself) who don’t remember, Thrifty Drugstores (now Rite Aid) were the bastions of all things ice creamy. Think of the counters filled with beskirted girls and rough and tumble boys sipping root beer floats and living their Norman Rockwell-ian lives.

Back in those days, if you were to order an ice cream, they would grab a special little device that looks like some kind of food safe (and mostly harmless) weaponry, stab it into those giant cardboard tubs, and then spit it out into a cylindrical form atop (and somewhat into) a cone.

Now they just use a regular old scoop (and yes, they still have Thrifty ice cream stations in many Rite Aids).

Ahh the good ol’ days.

Well, thanks to our friend @mylastbite and the Warm Olives and Cool Cocktails blog, we have found a new device that will do the same for us – at home. She also says it can be used for cutting cookies, filo dough and other “snacks” into cylindrical form.

I suspect we could do some cool molecular gastronomy with it…

$15

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