Cherry and Shaved Chocolate Gelato - No Eggs!

Back in May of this year, I went to Singer Naturals Farm and interviewed Tom Szulist.

The beautiful pale cream flowers frosted the trees along the road; a perfume of sweet fruits yet to come floated through the car windows. We were eager to return when the cherries were ready to pick.



The first varietal of cherry came in early because of the weather, so the U-Pick was opened on the last weekend of June. To celebrate my husband's birthday, the family went cherry picking, with the promise of all the sweets to follow.

The Cavaliers, whose deep red color shone like candy, were picturesque and hung in clusters of ten to twenty. The berries were light, but their combined weight had the boughs hanging low.

We picked exactly 778 cherries, nearly 15 pounds of fruit. I only know exactly how many because I had to clean off, wash, pit, and bag halves and minced 778 cherries. Out of this we only lost 32 due to over ripeness.

The pitter was from Singer's shop, and it made short work of the two giant bags of drupes. The chopper helped immensely! I ended up with several bags of minced, chopped, and halved cherries.

I made gelato with 2 cups of cherries, 1 cup of light cream, 2 cups 2% milk, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 3 tbls cherry juice, and 1/2 cup shaved dark chocolate.



Scharffen Berger, a subsidiary of Hershey's since 2005, does not advertise its chocolate as "Fair Trade" chocolate, but has a policy of not buying beans from the west coast of Africa, where the industry is know to practice slavery and use child labor, unlike it's parent company who was slow to respond to it's poor production practices.





The gelato was blended slowly in my Krupps ice cream maker, packed while still very soft, then put in the freezer. It's intensely flavored, smooth, and very rich.  It's so rich that, like the Caramel, Irish Sea Salt, and Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Ice Cream, a little bit goes a long way.