Our mission is to use the unique pleasure of the Sweetcycle to make the connections between food, ingredients, energy and the land physically tangible, to make the act of creating delicious food relate more closely to the need for sustainable agriculture and energy in order to preserve the earth.

 
 

Milk > Cream


My gelato contains more milk than cream.  It takes a lot of milk to skim off a small amount of cream: around 8 cups of milk will yield 1 cup of cream.  It is expensive and requires much more energy and equipment to extract. My gelato has no eggs and I have chosen to emulsify the gelato with rice flour and locust bean gum. With the gelling agents I have chosen to use, I don’t need as much cream to thicken my gelato base.  With less cream and without egg yolks, my gelato has less of that tongue-coating cold-fat mouth-feel that I often taste in egg based ice creams. The flavors I choose to infuse into my gelato base -- mint, vanilla, basil, cinnamon, honey, green tea or rose petals, for example -- are therefore clearer and less muddled.

Sustainable Ingredients


My gelato has no eggs.  Many ice cream recipes call for egg yolks, which function as emulsifiers in ice cream, keeping water in a gel (making the ice cream smooth and not icy) and increasing the ice cream’s ability to hold air when it is churned. Butterfat in cream also holds air once ice cream is churned.  Air translates on the tongue to the sensation of creaminess that we all love in ice cream. 

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Gelato vs Ice Cream


Simply put, “gelato” is the Italian word for ice cream. Nevertheless, ask two chefs to explain the defining characteristics between the two and you will get two different answers.  My own feeling is that there is a distinct difference between the two, but that that difference cannot be explained by appeals to authority or authenticity. Rather, from my point of view, the difference between the two desserts is largely cultural and a result of what ingredients are readily available in Italy and how the Italians produce, sell and eat their ice cream.  

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