I’ve enjoyed many a delicious ice cream and sorbet from Gelupo Gelato’s popular gelateria over the years. Located on Archer Street in Soho – just across the road from its big sister Bocca di Lupo Italian restaurant – Gelupo Gelato has been one of London’s most lauded ice cream shops since 2010. I like to pop in whenever I am in the area, often struggling to choose from the classics and seasonal flavours. The flavours and textures are everything you’d expect and more!
Now, Jacob Kenedy is sharing all of his best tips and recipes from the gelateria in an eponymous cookbook: Gelupo Gelata: A Delectable Palette of Ice Cream Recipes. As well as gelati, sorbets, sherbets, granitas and semifreddos, Kenedy also provides recipes for profiteroles, cones, buns, ice cream cakes, sundaes and ‘the only chocolate sauce you’ll ever need‘ to complete your home gelateria efforts.
Gelupo Gelato is a small, colourful hardback; the pastel swathes that swirl across the cover also feature inside, in bright illustrations throughout the book – of fruits and nuts, of forests and mountains, of hot air balloons, beach umbrellas, bobbing sailboats and Italian architecture, of ice lollies on sticks and ice cream in bowls…
But the prevalence of all these pretty illustrations has a flip-side – this book has a complete absence of photography. And I confess that, shallow as it may be, I much prefer cookbooks with photos; a great food photograph is an irresistible visual magnet pulling me towards one recipe over another, and can also serve to reassure me that my efforts have turned out as they should! I feel their absence keenly here.
That said, this is a fun, cute and stylish book. From the dedication to Dylan that “the world is your gelato: lick it“, to the secondary contents page representing every gelato, sorbet, sherbet, granita and semifreddo by a stylised circular graphic, to the introduction expressing the joy of gelato, there is a lightness of mood that is catching.
Onwards into the content proper, we are given a short glossary of essential terms (including, rather charmingly, ‘Happiness’) before learning what gelato is and how it works (with notes on fruit and on kitchen waste), and the main equipment we need to make it. Next, a set of straightforward lessons on how to make and serve gelato, semifreddo, and granita.
And with that we’re into the recipes. The main chapter covers all the gelatos, sorbets, sherbets, granitas and semifreddos. There are classic stalwarts that can be found in gelaterias across Italy – fior di latte (flower of milk), hazelnut, mint stracciatella, pistachio, rum raisin, tiramisu, lemon granita, blood orange granita, raspberry sorbet, lime sherbet, zabaione semifreddo. And there are many more unusual ideas of the kind Gelupo is known for – rice gelato, pine nut and fennel seed, whisky and vanilla, Christmas pudding, ricotta coffee and honey, pumpkin and cinnamon, strawberry and pink peppercorn, halwa, peanut butter and jelly, chocolate, tea and biscuits, Aperol granita, ricotta and pear semifreddo…
Following are chapters on ice cream cones, buns, profiteroles (and other things to serve ice cream in and on), delicious recipes featuring gelato (such as a fabulous list of affogato ideas, ice cream cakes, sundaes and more) and the one and only chocolate sauce recipe, as promised!
At the end some guidance on how to make multiple batches of gelato or sorbet in quick succession, by creating a large batch of ‘base bianca’ or sorbet syrup and adding the main flavouring ingredients to portions in turn; and some wonderful ideas for killer combos – the joy of having two or more flavours side by side! Lastly comes a decent index and a shortlist identifying vegan recipes.
Here I must put my hand up to breaking my own rules for Kavey Eats cookbook reviews – that the reviewer has made at least one recipe from the book, preferably more. I have made none! The recipes here are laudably precise and proper, using stabilisers and liquid glucose – whereas my personal ice cream efforts are far more casual; my latest ice cream featured imprecise amounts of very sweet and ripe mango flesh, single cream and a splash of lemon juice blended together till smooth and tipped into the ice cream machine and it was pretty decent, if I say so myself! But there is still great value in the book, even for a lazy ice cream lover like me, by way of inspiration about flavours and combinations, as well as the ideas on things to serve over, under and alongside.
Recipes from Gelupo Gelato
We have permission from Bloomsbury Publishing to share some recipes with you from the book: [coming soon]
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Kavey Eats received a review copy of Gelupo Gelata by Jacob Kenedy from Bloomsbury Publishing. Illustrated by Märta Andrén for Here Design.
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