With the arrival of warm weather, ice cream is just the thing! Even better if it is genuine and light. Kind of like Smurf (or blue, whatever) ice cream. A popular recipe in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, a few ice cream parlors still offer it, always garnering acclaim from young and old alike.
But what are the ingredients that make up this very curious ice cream?
You can find the complete list a few lines below. Now, however, we reveal the ingredient that gives our recipe the shades of blue: it is a food coloring, 100% natural.
Dulcis in fundo, to accommodate this mouth-watering cream, we also offer you a disc of shortbread. Again, find ingredients and preparation.
But let’s proceed with the recipe.
Ingredients for 8 people
For the ice cream
- 5 gr of Taste&Color Blue
- 400 ml fresh cream
- 200 ml of fresh whole milk
- 180 g of sugar
- ½ vanilla bean
For the shortbread
- 200 g of Pastry Flour
- 100 g butter
- 90 g sugar
- 1 whole egg
- a handful of salt
- the pulp of ½ a vanilla bean
For decoration
- 50 g of blueberries
- 20 g of almond slivers
- some fresh mint leaves
Preparation of Smurf ice cream
In a saucepan, put the cream, milk, sugar , and vanilla bean pulp.
Heat over very low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Remove from heat and let cool, for 5 minutes, to room temperature.
At this point, add the dye to the mixture and stir vigorously, helping yourself with a whisk.
Transfer the liquid to the refrigerator for at least 8 hours.
After the necessary time has elapsed, pour the liquid into the ice cream maker and let it churn for 30 minutes.
Finally, transfer the ice cream to the freezer for 1 hour.
While you are waiting for the ice cream to be ready, you can move on to preparing the shortbread disk.
Preparing the shortbread disk
In a bowl, bring together the flour, salt, vanilla, and sugar.
Mix and add egg and cold butter.
Knead thedough with your hands, then, turn it out onto a work surface and form a smooth ball.
Wrap in plastic wrap and transfer to refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Roll out the shortcrust pastry thinly and cut out 8 discs about 6-8 cm in diameter.
Arrange the disks on a baking sheet and bake at 180 degrees C for 10 minutes.
Once cooked, bake the discs and let them cool completely.
Serve the shortbread disks with a scoop of ice cream on top and decorate with blueberries and slivers of chopped almonds.
For the recipe, thanks to Maddalena of Cucina Scacciapensieri.
