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I thought I'd make ice cream for a holiday dessert, and spumone seemed to be the answer, as the
recipe called for spirits, candied fruit, nuts, etc.
Here is the recipe, and my experience with it (first try):
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SPUMONE DI TAORMINA (by Nicola Zanghi)*
Vegetable oil (for greasing ice cream mold) Grated rind of one blood orange
1/4 cup finely chopped toasted almonds
2/4 cup finely chopped candied fruit 3 tablespoons orange liqueur (I used Hiram Walker
Orance Curacao)
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 pint heavy cream, beaten until stiff
4/4 cup sugar 4 tablespoons light corn syrup 6 eggs at room temperature, well-beaten (I used eggs
graded extra-large)
Grease ice cream mold with vegetable oil. Fold orange rind, candied fruit, liqueur and chopped nuts
into whipped cream, chill in refrigerator. Combine sugar and corn syrup in saucepan and cook to 220
degrees F, just below soft-ball stage. Pour syrup slowly into the eggs, whisking constantly. Whisk
over ice until mixture is cool, then fold into chilled whipped cream, turn into greased mold, freeze
overnight. Unmold by quickly dipping mold into tepid water.
*The Great Cooks' Guide to Ice Cream & Other Frozen Desserts, Wendy Afton Reider, Kate Slate, et
al., eds. New York: Random House, 1977. 54 pp.
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Results and comments:
5. Sugar syrup: when I tried to cook this, the syrup cooked QUICKLY to the crack stage and I had to
discard it. Second try, I added 1/4 cup water to the mixture and was able to cook it more slowly
and gently, to the desired soft-ball stage.
6. Color: I added 1 tablespoon of blood orange juice to the whipped cream to give it a nice pink
look. The orange rind didn't add enough pinkness (there is much variety in blood orange rinds;
some are plain orange and some are reddish).
7. Consistency of frozen product: the heavy parts of the mixture (egg yolks, nuts, fruit peel)
settled to the bottom, and the whipped cream rose to the top, as the mixture froze overnight.
When I served it I scraped off the lighter top mixture and served that only. Note for next time:
stir this at regular intervals as the mixture freezes.
8. Sometimes spumone is served as a multi-layered molded ice cream dessert, with the spumone flavor
as one layer, plus another layer of chocolate and one of pistachio (or strawberry) and a layer of
sponge cake or some sort of cake on the bottom. It's really quite a spectacular and pretty
dessert if made properly, but I think molded ice cream treats have generally gone out of fashion.
This was delicious, but I think it needed to be mixed up more thoroughly. However, the recipe did
not call for it being frozen in a hand-crank freezer.
Anyhow, learn from my experience. I saw some "Safeway Select Brand" spumone ice cream at the store
this evening and I almost bought it (it had layers of rum-flavored, chocolate and pistachio ice
creams) until I read the ingredients list. It contained turnips, as well as polysorbate 60. Phfew.
-- dkra
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