Cherry Gelato

I had gum surgery a little over a week ago, meaning I was on a soft food diet for a few days. In order to make may days of eating Campbell's soup and protein shakes more enjoyable, I decided to lift my spirits by doing some cooking. What is great about having some sort of oral surgery is that you can justify eating large quantities of ice cream. My thought process is this: limiting myself to soups and protein shakes means my caloric intake is not up to its normal amount. Physical discomfort and difficulty eating mean my food intake is slower and I feel full faster. Plus I need to keep my food intake up to par to help with the healing process. Therefore, I should eat an inordinate amount of ice cream to speed my recovery and keep my spirits up.


What you see is cherry gelato. This is my first chance to make this recipe since cherries are now in season. The recipe I had used whole milk as the base, flavored with a vanilla bean and some turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw), and thickened with cornstarch. The cherry portion was a blend of cherries, turbinado sugar, and vanilla and almond extracts. After cooling both of these portions, they were combined and placed in my ice cream maker. The end result had a great flavor. The cherries really stand out with a background of almonds. I may have liked some larger cherry pieces mixed in, but it was still good. I think using the whole milk may have increased the size of some of the ice crystals in the gelato. The consistency is good but every once in a while you come across a decently sized ice crystal. But upgrading to heavy cream would have meant a good deal more calories, so whole milk is a good substitute. I'm not totally crazy to think that if I did eat extra calories while I'm not being as active as normal would not mean an increase in fat mass. A few extra ice crystals could go a long way to keeping off those few extra pounds. The holiday calories, after all, are only a couple months a way...