Last updated on January 18, 2024
We have collected our most original recipes in an cookbook to make delicious Italian gelato with the ice cream maker. In a new, second edition with even more flavors. As delicious as the one from the ice cream shop 👍
For all connoisseurs who, like us, can't wait until summer to enjoy a delicious homemade ice cream
Many ask us for more information about making ice cream. We've collected it all in our ice cream recipe book, available in e-book or paperback format.
Homemade ice cream is tasty, inexpensive, and making it gives a lot of satisfaction: we often write it on the pages of All Italian.
Like the one from the ice cream shop? Sometimes even more.
You make Italian ice cream at home with fresh ingredients and without additives: and therefore it has an intense and "natural" taste.
In ice cream parlors in Italy, 1 kg of ice cream (a takeaway tub for 5 people) costs around 20 euros 💸;
The same amount of homemade ice cream costs about 2 euros.
A no-brainer for us ice cream lovers.
Making ice cream with our recipes is simple and fast: often the recipe is ready in less than an hour.
The Italian words of this page:
| 🔊 Gelato | Ice cream |
| 🔊 Ricettario | Recipe book |
| 🔊 Gelatiera | Ice cream maker |
| 🔊 Gelateria | Ice cream shop |
Many ice cream recipes you find online are a bit improvised in our opinion. Maybe because ice cream isn't the focus of the big cooking sites; many food bloggers make ice cream with unnecessary ingredients such as condensed milk or too many eggs.
Instead, you need fresh and balanced ingredients to make delicious Italian ice cream.
In our book we offer at least one recipe for each type of ice cream so that you can practice the different techniques: heating the ice cream mixture with eggs; melting the chocolate; adding dried fruit or biscuits; making stracciatella or variegating ice cream; preparing vegan ice cream and sorbet with egg whites.
A creamy «gelato alle mandorle» with milk, whipping cream and chopped almonds, without egg. 🔊 gelato alla mandorla in het Italiaans
🔊 Gelato all'amarena A classic and very popular flavor in Italy. It is a white milk ice cream that we variegate with a cherry coulis, usually mixed with whole cherries.
We use avocado to make vegan ice cream, much creamier than a normal sorbet. Avocado also softens the pungent taste of the kiwi.
The classic «cookies» flavor from Italian ice cream parlors, enriched with crumbled cookies.
The taste of chocolate is more intense when we make a sorbet, with only water and sugar and without milk. While we are melting the chocolate, we can flavor it with fresh mint leaves.
Raspberry sorbet is the classic flavor from the ice cream parlour, which we make without milk and therefore as a sorbet. We add a pinch of banana to soften its texture and taste.
Raspberry ice cream The creamier alternative to raspberry sorbet, with milk and whipping cream. The mix of raspberries and milk results in a bright pink color. Called 🔊 gelato ai lamponi in Italian.
Ginger ice cream, 🔊 gelato allo zenzero in Italian, is a spicy flavor rarely found in ice cream parlors. We flavor the milk with fresh ginger for an aromatic ice cream.
In Italy we know this ice cream flavor as «Coppa del nonno», grandpa's cup. A delicious version of coffee ice cream, for lovers of espresso and whipping cream
Milk and mint, 🔊 latte e menta, is a traditional summer drink, served cold in the «latteria», the milk shop. We flavor the milk with fresh mint leaves, which gives it a light green color
Ice cream made with quark cheese is very creamy and reminiscent of the tiramisù ice cream flavor. At the end of the preparation we add date syrup to variegate it.
A variation of cookies ice cream made with the hazelnut paste biscuits of a popular Italian brand, made with hazelnut and chocolate paste.
white vanilla ice cream enriched with crumbled pieces of the famous American sandwich cookies.
A fruit ice cream with an exceptional taste. If you use fresh fruits, you will need some: the pulp of a passion fruit weighs about 1.4 oz. We make it creamy with milk and whipping cream.
Apple strudel is a traditional dessert in my region, Trentino. My family's recipe is delicious and I make ice cream with it. With cooked apples, pine nuts, raisins and cinnamon flavor.
A vegan alternative to classic pistachio ice cream, soft and creamy thanks to the fats contained in coconut milk.
The version of cherry ice cream made with milk and whipping cream. In Italian we call it 🔊 gelato alla ciliegia.
The one with carrots is one of my favorite cakes and I made it into ice cream, with almonds and Digestive cookies.
Ice cream flavored with licorice sticks is very reminiscent of the taste of oldtimers candies, and always disappears quickly from our freezer.
An alternative combination of ingredients for a fresh and spicy sorbet.
In Italians 🔊 gelato allo Spritz
The Spritz is the Italian cocktail that is now also very famous abroad, perfect for an aperitivo in spring and summer. But have you ever tried spritz ice cream? The idea came after making limoncello ice cream.
And yes, it really does taste like Spritz!
Gelato meets the tase of limoncello, like in the best Italian ice cream parlors: we made it very creamy, extra flavoured with lemon zest.
In Italian: 🔊 gelato al tiramisù
We all know the Italian dessert with mascarpone cheese; and because cheeses like mascarpone and ricotta are perfect for making desserts creamy, we use them to make an ice cream flavor: to enjoyed on a cone, or in a cup with ladyfingers biscuits and espresso coffee.
In Italian: 🔊 gelato agli amaretti
The cookie ice cream flavors are what we call 🔊 gusti crema in Italy, because they are the most creamy (cremosi).
In our recipe book we make ice cream with different types of biscuits, both from Italy and from other areas of Europe.
Amaretti are typical Italian biscuits with almond flavor and share the taste with the famous Amaretto liqueur.
An ice cream with the typical Dutch biscuits that our friends in Italy love. This flavor is not always found in ice cream parlors here in the Netherlands, so we made it for you.
Cookie ice cream is one of the most popular ice cream flavors in Italian ice cream shops. We prepare it with Speculaas, typical Belgian gingerbread cookies flavored with cinnamon.
Another ice cream flavor with cheese, and a chance to use the 🔊 variegatura (zoals variegation) technique: that is, adding an ingredient later to make striped ice cream.
The result is an exceptional ice cream.
In Italian we say this proverb: 🔊 Al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il formaggio con le pere, which literally means don't let the farmer know how good cheese with pears is: because it is a delicate and full of flavor combination. A specialty to discover.
Another ice cream with ricotta, to which we add candied fruit as in the traditional Sicilian dessert.
Traditionally, Baci Perugina are the chocolates exchanged by lovers in Italy: 🔊 Bacio Italian for kiss.
Packaged in its signature blue wrapper, Baci Perugina are a mix of chocolate, cocoa and chopped hazelnuts.
The Bacio ice cream flavour owes its name to that and is one of the most popular in Italian ice cream shops. Abroad it is less common: an excellent opportunity to include it in our ice cream recipe book.
In Italian: 🔊 sorbetto all'arancia
Lemon sorbet is popular in Italy and is often served at events, such as weddings, together with Prosecco wine in the drink sgroppino.
Orange sorbet is an original alternative: we make it creamy and flavored with orange peel.
Ice cream flavors such as chocolate, pistachio or hazelnut ice cream can be made with or without eggs.
The difference is that with eggs the ice cream can be slightly creamier, but the preparation takes twice as long.
👉 In this recipe you will learn how to make ice cream with freshly chopped pistachios.
In Italian: 🔊 sorbetto
Strawberry ice cream and mango ice cream are tasty, but as sorbets? Even better, in our opinion.
Fruit gelato flavors can be made in two ways: as ice cream, with whipped cream and milk, or as sorbet with water.
You can also see the difference in ice cream parlors, when they have both versions: one is paler, because it is diluted in milk. Without milk, the ice cream is less creamy, but much tastier: it is the perfect ice cream for spring and summer days.
👉 In this recipe we show you how to make sorbet with water and sugar: the least calorie «ice cream» of them all.
Stracciatella is a special flavour because we know who invented it: it was made in 1961 in Bergamo by Enrico Panattoni.
The tradition of this gelato is still alive in the city of Bergamo. In our recipe book we make it extra creamy by adding ricotta.
👉 In this recipe we show how to make stracciatella with chocolate flakes.
The Yogurt ice cream is one of the most popular, but is frowned upon by many ice cream parlors.
You can prepare it in many ways, light or very creamy. We make it with Greek yogurt, sweetened with a mix of sugar and honey.
In this recipe we show you how to make completely vegan ice cream, with alternatives to whipping cream and milk.
To make it extra tasty, we also variegate it (🔊 variegatura in Italian), by mixing it with cold date syrup
.The ice cream flavor with whipping cream and without eggs: Contrary to popular belief, you don't need eggs to make creamy gelato. 🔊 Fiordilatte forms the basis of many other flavors from Italian ice cream shops.
If you don't use eggs, all you have to do is mix the fresh ingredients, without the extra step of pasteurization.
So from the time you mix the ingredients to the time you eat the ice cream, less than an hour goes by.
👉 Pasteurization (🔊 pasturizzare in Italian) means heating the mixture to near boiling, to remove the bacteria present in it.
In the ice cream produced by ice cream parlors, pasteurization is always necessary, even with fruit flavours; this unfortunately removes some of the flavor from the ice cream.
Do different ice cream flavors from the ice cream parlor sometimes taste the same? That is why.
Fruit ice cream flavors with whipping cream are therefore tastier if you make them at home, because you use fresh fruit that you do not have to pasteurize.
👉 Usually, the fruit flavors you make at home never contain eggs, contrary to what some recipes online write.
In Italy we have a name for the basic egg ice cream flavor: 🔊 gelato alla crema.
This ice cream with eggs recipe is the basis for other flavors.
Eggs give a thicker texture to the ice cream, but it takes a little longer to prepare; you need to heat the mixture and then let it cool completely.
👉 While we are heating the mixture, it is a good opportunity to add extra aroma to the ice cream: with a vanilla pod, a cinnamon stick or the zest of a lemon.
You bought an ice cream maker, but the instruction manual isn't much help. It happened to us too.
Sometimes the mixture stays liquid, and the mixing paddle stops before the ice cream is ready. Other times it becomes solid like a popsicle.
And so many, after the first few attempts, abandon the idea and put the ice machine away; thinking that making ice cream at home isn't really possible.
Instead, we use the ice cream maker a lot; in summer as well as in winter.
You don't need a special ice cream maker: with a little experience (and our tips) making ice cream is very easy and is always a success.
The ice cream maker mixes our mixture in a cold container for 40-50 minutes. This process is called 🔊 mantecare in Italian: making from a liquid a soft and puffy ice cream.
During this time, the semi-liquid mixture accumulates air, increases in volume and becomes ice cream: a mixture of sugar, fat, air bubbles and small ice crystals.
Ice cream with the ice cream maker fails? You can follow our tips, along with our gelato recipes with the right amounts of ingredients.
We regularly update our pages with new ice Italian cream recipes: tasty and healthy gelato flavors that you can make at home.
I am Italian from Trentino. I studied philosophy in Padua and worked for many years between Milan and Amsterdam in the field of media and culture.
Since 2021 I write on All Italian to practice foreign languages; meanwhile I share with you the customs and traditions of my country, and the recipes that I prepare at home.
