Left alone, the ice grows into ferns. Churned, it stays too fine to feel.
Hold C to churn
Gelato is ice that never got the chance.
We make gelato and sorbet every morning in the back of our shop at Henley Beach, with whatever fruit came in, nuts we roasted, cocoa, milk and cream, and we churn it slowly so the ice stays too small to feel. Drag in circles on the glass to see what we mean.
Set to fior di latte at −11 °C. Change it in Made this morning.
In the wells today
Fior di latte
Milk and cream from the morning delivery, a split vanilla bean, and nothing to hide behind.
Pistachio
Riverland pistachios we roasted on Tuesday and ground while they were still warm.
We change two wells a day, depending on what came in.
Dark chocolate
Cocoa and dark chocolate, stiff enough to stand up in a curl on the spatula.
Lemon sorbet
Riverland lemons, juice and zest, the sugars and water. That’s all.
Amarena ripple
Sour cherries cooked down in sugar and their own juice, rippled through fior di latte with the spatula.
Just out of the churn
Strawberry
The first Adelaide Hills strawberries of the spring. Here while they last.
Warm air in, frost on top.
Every time a well sits open, warm shop air meets cold gelato, and the water in it starts to find itself again. It creeps out as frost, the same feathery ice you grew up the top. So the lids go back on between every scoop, and what you get at four o’clock is what we churned at seven.
Made this morning
The part nobody sees is the sugar. Sugar sweetens, but it also decides how cold the gelato can get before it sets hard. Pick a flavour and the cold of the counter, and we’ll show you what we’d weigh out and how it’ll feel under the spatula.
Read it from the bottom, the way it goes in.
- The base: milk and cream, warmed with the sugars to 85 °C and cooled fast
- The sugars: three of them, weighed to the flavour and the cold of the counter
- The fruit or the nuts: juiced, zested or ground warm
- A rest: a few hours cold while we do the fruit
- The churn: slowly, about twelve minutes, turning the whole time
- The well: straight in, shaped with the spatula, lid on
Pick a flavour
Scoopable
At −11 °C the fior di latte folds over the spatula in one clean ridge, just how we like it.
| Whole milk | 636 |
|---|---|
| Cream | 160 |
| Skim milk powder | 35 |
| Vanilla bean, split | 1 |
| Sucrose (cane sugar) | 146 |
| Dextrose | 16 |
| Invert sugar | 6 |
| All together | 1000 |
Worked out here from standard sugar values; the other figures are illustrative, drawn for this page. Ours shift a little with every batch of fruit.
Why lemon is softer than chocolate
Lemon sorbet has no cream to give it body, so it carries more sugar, and a little dextrose. That same sugar holds the water back from freezing, so it sits soft and bright in the well. Dark chocolate is the other way round. The cocoa brings its own solids and holds it firm, so it needs less help and scoops in a curl. People call it dense; that’s the cocoa, not the cold.
Sugar keeps the water from freezing hard.
What came in this week
Lemons from the Riverland, a crate of them, so the sorbet’s back; pistachios we roasted on Tuesday until the whole kitchen smelled of them; the first strawberries from the Adelaide Hills, small and very red; a jar of sour cherries we cooked down in summer in sugar and their own juice; and vanilla, the bean, split and scraped into the fior di latte.
Whatever’s good, we churn.
At the counter
One flavour, two, or three sharing a cup. A cone or a cup. Ask for a taste on the little steel spoon.
We don’t use a round scoop. Warm the blade, work the gelato soft, press it on.
- Milk, cream, fruit, nuts, cocoa and sugar.
- That’s what goes in, with water for the sorbets and a vanilla bean in the fior di latte. Nothing to make it stand up that the churn doesn’t.
- Vanilla from the bean.
- Split and scraped, every batch.
- Cherries in their own syrup.
- Cooked down here in sugar and their own juice.
- Ask us about nuts.
- We roast pistachios and almonds in this kitchen, so tell us before you choose.
Open every day from late morning, a short walk from the sand at Henley Beach.
Cakes, and a cart for the day
Layered cold in a steel ring. Pick two flavours and the day; we need three days to make it.
Tap a lid to open that well.
Four wells, a freezer that runs off one power point, and one of us behind it. We bring it to weddings, garden parties and long lunches along the coast and up in the Hills.
Ask about a cake or the cart
Tell us what the day is and what you’d like in the wells. We’ll come back to you with what we can do.
Galaverna is the frost that grows on a still morning. We keep it out of the wells.