Peach Lavender Gelato

Today we were elbow deep in peaches. Sofia and I made peach lavender butter and peach gelato. We had peaches with our cereal and peaches for morning snack. I even gave viola a whole peach (skinned and pitted). That was, to say the least, messy.

On Sunday morning I dragged the family out to Schnepf Farms in Queen Creek, just below Phoenix. They are a family-run organic orchard and farm. They also have quite a few kid friendly attractions like a petting zoo, hayride to the orchard, kids play area with a hay ale maze and even a mini roller coaster! It was already a scorching 95 degrees when we got there at 11 in the morning. Next time I'll make sure not to do it on a day when I have a CSA pick up first! We attempted to take the hayride but there was a line comparable to those at any major theme park. So we just trucked it out to the orchard in the heat; it was just a couple of minutes away. When we got to the trees we were very thankful to see them loaded with peaches, and we did out fair share of trying them out! Even viola got in on the act. In total I picked only 14 pounds; I would have picked another 14 had it not been for the heat. Amazing how quickly heat can turn a really fun activity into a cranky disaster. So we found some shade, cooled off, and then headed home. Sorry there aren't any pictures, buy it was just too hot to think about that.

With three of those 14 pounds of peaches I made peach lavender butter. The recipe I took from Canning and Preserving with Ashley English.

On my recent trip back to New Mexico I visited Los Poblanos, a working lavender farm. Of course I brought back a lovely jar of culinary lavender.

The color of the flowers is just amazing; I used this lavender to make the butter.

Now down to the real business of this post: the gelato! My gelato recipe is quite different from other gelato or ice cream recipes as it's a no-cook (raw) recipe. It uses cream, milk, 1 egg, sugar and a flavor. It makes about 4-6 servings. I found this recipe somewhere a few years ago on the Internet in Italian. I've had no luck finding it to link up to again, and I've made adaptations anyway so it's become my own.

I want to make note before posting this, that I use one raw egg for this recipe. I use only the freshest local organic pastured eggs that I get from a guy I know well. I would not recommend using store bought eggs raw at all; use pasteurized eggs instead.

Peach Lavender Gelato Recipe

Ingredients:

• 200 ml of organic whole milk
• 250 ml of organic cream
• 150 ml of peach lavender butter
• 50 ml of lavender water (this was left over from the butter making)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup or 125 grams of sucanat, evaporated cane juice, or your favorite sugar

In a bowl combine milk, lavender water, peach lavender butter, egg and sugar. Whisk until well combined. In a separate bowl whisk cream until very soft peaks form, just enough to get a bit of air into the cream. Then add the cream to the mix mixture and stir to combine. Pour it into your ice cream maker work bowl and follow its instructions. Serve with a sprinkle of lavender for looks and a tiny pinch of sea salt. Sounds crazy, but the salt is fabulous!

The base recipe is as such:

• 250 ml of milk
• 250ml of cream
• 1 egg
• 150 ml of flavor

You can double this easily. But don't mess too much with the milk to cream ratio as it will turn icey. Having ice crystals in your gelato is no fun. As for the flavor, I've done pistachio, chocolate, coffee, strawberry, mixed berries, Tahitian vanilla bean, chai spice, pumpkin, banana and coconut.