It was just one year ago, on my birthday, that my adult son and daughter handed me a somewhat heavy but tall box. I had no idea what was inside. I really didn’t. As soon as I opened the top and saw the Cuisinart label, I knew what it was. A gelato maker, just like the one I’d been eyeing on Amazon for some months. Everyone knew I loved gelato and I’d been threatening to learn how to make gelato for a long time, but I never thought I actually would. Something I said but would never do. It seemed too hard, too strange, too lofty a culinary goal even though I liked to cook. 

We always had to stock gelato in our house, spending the lofty prices Toronto gelaterias charge for pints and quarts.

I’d stop at La Paloma, then still open on St. Clair West, or Hollywood Gelato in Leaside, one of the industry pioneers, or Eglinton West’s Hotel Gelato, so consistent over the years.

The $30-$35 purchases added up. 

I took it out of the box with a great big smile. A Cuisinart ICE-70C Gelato maker. 

It came with a paddle and a clear top that held down the canister, which is kept in the freezer and then when inserted into the machine churns to freeze the ingredients.  Chilling the mix overnight was became an essential step. One of its best features was having three speeds: gelato, sorbet and ice cream.

A recipe book is included, which I needed badly. I had never made gelato before. Maybe once I tried ice cream in one of those old hand freezers with salt all around the canister as might have been used on the farm in the 1920s.

And now two years later, I have to say that the Cuisinart ice cream, gelato, sorbet, and frozen yogurt recipes are all very workable and produce good quality frozen desserts. The trick then is to adapt them for your own tastes or find others that also work; that takes a while. What did I make first? I believe it was dark chocolate sorbet or as we discovered in Italy, chocolate fondente, meaning a non-dairy chocolate-only creation. People are surprised at how incredibly creamy and dairy-like it is, never believing has no milk or cream, even in the chocolate chips. I’ve served it to vegans with a clear conscience. 

Later my daughter commented that she had never given me a present that was so life changing. And that was true. I found something that engaged me like nothing else had in recent years. I mean, I liked to read and use DuoLingo; I played the guitar not as often as I wished, I like to cook, but not always, there was golf and fitness but nothing I was doing with such great passion and delight. I wasn’t superior with all of them as I was here. I quickly found out I had a knack for making gelato. I became a gelatista.

There is a real joy in imagining a flavour and creating it. It is so elemental with the natural products of the earth and you feel connected with the land and agriculture.  Stark white and pure milk and cream from the farm. Eggs yolks separated from their whites, the pure essence of orange-yellow like the sun. White granulated sugar from the cane field. Dark brown vanilla pods, so fragrant, from Tahiti or India.

All kinds of fruits—fresh raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, even lemons. Cheeses like Italian mascarpone with figs or ricotta with lemon. Nuts of all kinds.

I brought back Bronte pistachio cream from Sicily, the finest in the world for that flavour or similar hazelnut cream. Very expensive stuff if ordered on Amazon. I’ve mastered roasting and grinding actual hazelnuts with my so-called ‘nut bag,’ that squeezes the essence out of hazelnuts or other nuts that have been steeped in milk. It is very effective. Espresso, from my own PicoBaristo with beans from around the world.  I’ve even used marshmallows, a flavour we call Campfire in homage to Prince Edward County’s Slickers Ice Cream,

its originator — not exactly natural but elemental in thinking of a cottage fire night and eating the sugary burnt ends on a stick and breathing in the charcoal smell. And last but not least, chocolate. Oh chocolate, how I love chocolate, from all around the world. Every Italian gelateria has at least six or seven varieties, fondente with no dairy, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, chocolate with almonds or hazelnuts. Chocolate from Ecuador, Peru, Ghana, Brazil and Indonesia. It makes me swoon. 

What has impressed me so much over the past two years is how one can fall into this new way of life…the gelato way, how it’s important to make and store it, how the surprise and delight of homemade gelato gives family and friends a warm glow. I feel I am involved in something magical. That incredible transformational alchemy of milk, cream, sugar and a flavour is like nothing l could ever imagine. It brings a shiver and a chill to my body.