When I was a kid, I used to love using a spoon to whip my ice cream into a fluffy consistency. While it significantly sped up the ice cream’s melt time, I found the new texture I’d created a lot more agreeable than the spoon-bending hardness of the straight-from-the-freezer stuff. It never occurred to my sugar-addled, 10-year-old mind that in the process of whipping up my ice cream, I was actually making a sort of off-brand homemade gelato.
But now that I’ve grown older and my palate has matured, I still enjoy the ice cream whipping trick, but don’t do it as frequently as I used to. There’s just something missing. To my 30-year-old taste buds that have known such exotic delicacies as fugu, unagi, foie gras, street tacos and meatball subs, it’s just mushy ice cream.
But now, thanks to this secret trick we found on the Japanese Interwebs, I’ve rekindled my love for Poor Man’s Gelato.
According to this Japanese website, all one need do is grab a cup of ice cream at the local convenience store, then take it home and add one somewhat surprising ingredient: Olive oil. After that, it’s just a matter of invoking your inner 10-year-old and furiously whipping the concoction together with your spoon. What you’re left with is a homemade cold dessert that’s a decent analogue for gelato.
Because I was a little skeptical – and also because my editor made me – I decided to give the recipe a shot at home. The trick is easy enough to get right; the only thing you really need to be careful of is not to add too much olive oil. About a 1/3 tablespoon will do the trick.
Overall, I was mildly impressed with the results. It definitely tastes different and more sophisticated than my childhood ‘recipe,’ but maybe not quite different enough to justify the not-insignificant boost in calories provided by the olive oil. After all, this is a trick that bodybuilders and movie stars plumping up for “fat” roles have known about for ages. I also found that the olive oil, while surprisingly not adding any of the oiliness I expected to the dish, gave the ice cream a weird, faintly banana-like aftertaste – although that could have been due to the ice cream I chose.
Would I try this trick again? Sure. Especially if I ever decide to chase my dreams of becoming the world’s first sumo wrestling champion from Ohio.
Source: Allabout
Photos: RocketNews24