NO CHURN NEAPOLITAN ICE CREAM

no fancy equipment or elbow grease required

Hi!

And welcome back to COME FOR SUPPER.

Something sweet this week and an idea that I have fixated on for a while. A NO CHURN NEAPOLITAN ICE CREAM.

I think I was seven the first time I had Neapolitan ice cream. It was at a friends birthday party and they had it instead of a birthday cake. I can still remember the thrill watching her mother scoop it out into cones for a fizzing gaggle of seven years olds who’d already consumed too much sugar. The idea of three flavours in one scoop giving me so much joy, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect thing.

To be honest, I don’t remember eating it again as an adult and it’s this memory that sticks with my most but the idea of making my own is one that I have obsessed over for years and I finally did it.

If you’re new here, scroll down to find the written recipe and scroll ALL the way down for the printable PDF where you’ll also find some MUSIC TO COOK TO. This one is for paid subscribers. If that’s you already, thank you!! Your support goes right back into my work developing recipes, shooting videos, and writing about all of it.

Traditionally Neapolitan ice cream comes in the form of three blocks of flavour, side by side in the container (a bit like a flag). Usually a trio of pistachio, cherry, chocolate. The origin of Neapolitan ice cream is not entirely certain. Despite its name alluding to being a staple pudding of Italy, it is more commonly seen in the UK and the USA. The general belief is that Neapolitan immigrants brought their gelato making skills to the United States and Neapolitan ice cream or spumoni, as the Italians often call it, was born.

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THE TESTS

ROUND 1

I have been making ice cream this way for years. If you’ve ben here a while you’ll have seen my No Churn Honey Almond Ice Cream. The method requires no fancy equipment and no elbow grease.

My initial plan was to create an ice cream with three colours side by side. I used a loaf pan and cut pieces of cardboard to separate the flavours. The idea being that once the flavours were in, I could remove the cardboard mid-freeze and they would happily continue freezing together in three perfect blocks of flavour. The reality was that THIS WAS REALLY STRESSFUL. It kind of worked (images below) but it was a messy job and far too much faff. COME FOR SUPPER is all about simple stress free entertaining and this was a stress. So it was on to round two.

ROUND 2

The joy of Neapolitan ice cream is that you get one perfect scoop with three different flavours. So this time, instead of stressing about trying to get perfect lines of ice cream I went for the blob method. I mixed up each flavour (which is wonderfully simple, you’ll see) and blobbed it about the container. The result was brilliant, certainly more fun visually and A LOT EASIER. I served it for pudding for friends over a weekend lunch and the response was joy!

THE RECIPE

NO CHURN NEAPOLITAN ICE CREAM

Raspberry, Vanilla, Pistachio