There’s chocolate chip ice cream. And then there is stracciatella gelato. Don’t you dare think one is a direct translation of the other because that is grossly untrue. And if you’ve ever had true stracciatella gelato, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Stracciatella is… otherworldly. You’d think plain vanilla ice cream with bits of chocolate would be boring, but you’d be wrong again (sorry, I’m not trying to school you or anything, but some things just need to be clarified).
The chocolate shards are what make stracciatella gelato so much more than chocolate chip. Literally translating into “rags” or “shards,” stracciatella is made by drizzling a fine stream of melted chocolate into the churning ice cream. The chocolate solidifies on contact, freezing into ethereal flakes that fuse with the ice cream and literally melt in your mouth.
In an effort to highlight the fresh flavor of the dairy, I used fewer egg yolks than usual, and a higher proportion of milk to cream. (Look, ma! It’s healthy…. er!) The result was an ephemeral ice cream with a texture not unlike that of a frozen cloud (if one were able to taste such things). Granted, it was a bit short, meaning it didn’t ball up into gorgeous, rotund scoops like a frozen custard with a higher fat content, but Taylor and I decided we loved the unfettered milk flavor and the light crystalline texture, vanilla snowflakes that dissolve instantly on your tongue.
As to how exactly to get those fine chocolate shards, I found a simple ziplock bag worked beautifully. I simply filled the bag with my melted chocolate (bonus – you can keep the bag in a bowl of warm water until you are ready to drizzle). Snip off the tiniest corner of the bag, and drizzle it right into your ice cream maker. Granted, this would probably work better with a standalone machine where you could drizzle right into the center. With my mixer model a lot of the chocolate stuck to the paddles as they passed under the drizzle. The key is you want a fine drizzle here… too thick and you’d end up with hard chunks and chips instead of flakes.
I’m not going to argue the differences between ice cream and gelato here. If you want to be totally literal, one IS simply a direct translation of the other, gelato meaning ice cream in Italian. However, if you want to get technical, Italian-style ice cream does have some distinct differences that make it unique. Gelato, for starters, is lower in butterfat, is churned quicker while incorporating less air, and is served softer, at a higher temperature than American ice cream. Recipe-wise, this could definitely be considered gelato, but because of the limitations of home ice cream makers, it is very hard to acheive the luscious texture that the Italians have perfected. If anyone has any tips for recreating legit gelato at home, I’m all ears!
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