Meet Ice Cream’s Way-Easier Cousin
The joys of semifreddo
You know what’s not a particularly creative or original food writing topic for the middle of summer? Making the case for frozen desserts. You know who’s going to do it anyway? Me. For two reasons: 1) The heat zaps your brain a little bit, and sometimes groundbreaking material just isn’t in the cards. 2) The particular frozen dessert I want to talk about is so underappreciated that I basically have no choice.
Semifreddo — “half-cold” in Italian — is basically whipped cream mixed with beaten egg yolks and beaten egg whites and then frozen in a loaf pan. Almost nobody makes it, which is too bad, because what you get is rich, velvety, and very much akin to ice cream.
Its main selling point, other than being really delicious and easy, is that you can make it without an ice cream machine; a loaf pan and electric mixer are really the only equipment you need. You use the mixer to beat (separately) whipped cream, eggs yolks, and whites (both with a little sugar), then you gently fold them all together, incorporating any number of flavorings along the way (keep reading), dump the mixture into a plastic-wrap-lined loaf pan or ceramic dish like the photo above, freeze until firm, and cut it into slices. The surface of the semifreddo will get a little wrinkled because of the plastic wrap; to smooth it out (if…
