This was a flavour that I collaborated on with designers Tin & Ed for Valentine’s Day. Their brief was mostly about how they wanted it to look good – they wanted it to have a really great colour. The quantity of blackberries in this recipe means that you get exactly that, and the flavour is pretty amazing too.
Ingredients
105g caster (superfine) sugar
45g dextrose
1 tablespoon skim milk powder
5g carob bean powder
515g milk
130ml pouring (single/light) cream
200g fresh blackberries
80g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into small chunks
pinch of sea salt flakes
Method:
Put the sugar, dextrose and skim milk powder in a bowl and mix to combine.
Put the carob bean powder in a separate bowl. Add two tablespoons of the sugar mixture and mix together well.
Pour the milk and cream into a large heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. Whisk in the carob bean powder mixture and continue to heat, whisking in the sugar mixture as you go, until it hits 85°C (185°F). Remove from the heat, pour into a suitable lidded container and leave to cool in the freezer for one hour, or until the mixture drops to 4°C (39°F).
Turn on your gelato maker so it begins the freezing process.
Add the blackberries to the mixture and blend with a hand-held blender until smooth.
Strain the mixture to remove the seeds and transfer it to your gelato maker. Once it reaches –4c or is the consistency of soft-serve ice cream (this should take about 30–45 minutes) detach the canister or scoop the gelato into a pre-cooled lidded container. Transfer to the freezer and leave for 1 hour to harden.
Melt the chocolate with the salt in a double boiler. Once melted, remove from the heat and leave it to cool to room temperature, then add it to the gelato, drizzling it over and mixing it in with a spatula to break it up into a chip. Place it back in the freezer and leave it for at least 1 hour to harden further before serving.
When Lisa Valmorbida was growing up, she used to daydream about owning her own restaurant – and through spending a lifetime with family obsessed with food, cooking and, of course, gelato, Valmorbida eventually became a gelato maker herself.
Coming out just in time for summer, PIDAPIPÓ: GELATO EIGHT DAYS A WEEK by follows Valmorbida’s journey to gelato-making, and includes countless amazing gelato recipes that epitomise what frozen treats are all about.
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