Weather is warming up and we are ready for cold desserts. We have made various gelato versions, but we have never tried hibiscus before. We were pleasantly surprised. Vanilla and hibiscus make a delightful combination, and eggs make it velvet creamy! You could omit the eggs to make a regular ice cream though if for any reason you want to avoid the eggs.
Do not try to infuse hibiscus in the half and half. There is enough acid in hibiscus to make it into the cheese when heating. Making syrup first is a better way.
Hibiscus gelato
Hibiscus syrup : 3/4 cup dried hibiscus, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water. Simmer for 5 minutes covered, let it cool down.
Gelato base:
2.5 cups half and half
1/3 cup sugar ground in coffee mill
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
pinch of salt
Mix all ingredients together, strain, put in the fridge while the syrup is cooling.
Strain syrup, mix it into a gelato base and place to the freezer for 10-20 minutes to make it very cold. Ice cream machines for home use have limited chilling ability so this step and ice packs on top of the ice cream machine will help.
Pour into an ice cream machine. Place ice packs on top. Churn for about 20 minutes. The texture will become firmer after a few hours in the freezer. Churning for longer might actually make things worse as ice cream bowl is becoming warmer as time goes.
Enjoy and try not to eat too much! if you try let us know in the comments how it went.
We have made coffee, matcha, and peanut butter gelato before. You can find those and other frozen dessert recipes in our playlist here:
Music credits:
Morning Light by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/