A Guide To Frozen Treats

Classic French ice cream, the kind posh restaurants serve, is made with flavoured egg custard base and cream, churned and frozen together.

Gelato is simply the Italian name for the same thing: some gelatos contain extra egg for a super-smooth texture, while others, usually fruit gelatos, contain no egg at all, to intensify their flavour.

A sorbet is churned from a flavoured liquid, most often a fruit puree or an infusion, plus sugar syrup and sometimes egg white.

Adding some milk to a sorbet turns it into a sherbet or milk ice.

A granita is more spartan, being simply a flavoured liquid, scraped into big crystalline flakes as it freezes.

A parfait is a non-churned ice cream, often alcoholic, made by beating hot syrup into egg yolks, folding in whipped cream and freezing the mix undisturbed.

Also non-churned is semifreddo, an Italian dessert usually based on whipped cream.

Indian kulfi is a unique iced dessert, made with a base of milk boiled down to a thick, syrupy consistency.



Extracted from HerWorld - June 2006