ROSE PETAL ICE CREAM (GELATO DI ROSE)

  

I have made more rosolio di rose (rose petal liqueur) and this time I used rose petals from some scented roses from my friends’ extensive garden at Euroa (Victoria). Although my friends have many roses, not many are scented or of a dark red colour, which is useful to tint the vodka to a deep, rose shade.

One of my readers used my recipe for making rose liqueur but reported that she did not feel that she needed to steep the petals for as long as I had suggested – this was certainly my experience on this occasion and the colour seem to leach out of the petals very quickly.

As you can see by the photos there were not many red petals, but I was surprised with the end colour.

The same reader used her rose petal liqueur for making cocktails. I wanted to use the liqueur like Kirsch, a dash at the bottom of a glass and topped with champagne – special enough for Christmas.  I had also read several recipes where fresh rose petals had been used to make ice cream and wondered if the liqueur could be successfully used instead. And it can be.  

Mainly to provide visual contrast and to fit in with the Christmas spirit I presented the ice cream with macerated berries. If I had a flower garden, or if I was able to purchase scented roses that had not been treated with any chemicals or sprayed with pesticides, I may have sprinkled a few fresh petals and on top of the ice cream instead of including the berries.

INGREDIENTS AND PROCESSES

Make a crema pasticcera (use the recipe in the post for Zuppa Inglese) but use 5 egg yolks instead of 3. I always use organic, full cream milk but for making this ice cream replace 1 cup of the milk with heavy cream.

Chill the custard overnight in the fridge.

Add ½- ¾ cup of rose liqueur to the chilled custard and stir it through gently.

Make ice cream following the manufacturer’s instructions.

Notes:

My ice cream machine is not a sophisticated, sealed unit; it is very primitive and consists of a frozen block at the bottom of a stirring apparatus, but most of the time it makes ice cream successfully. Alternatively freeze the mixture in a sealed container and during freezing stir the mixture a few times with a fork.

Because I wanted the ice cream to be a deeper shade of rose, I added about a teaspoonful of juice from the berries at the same time as the rose liqueur.