Homemade Raspberry Gelato

It's Jess, friends!  A couple of years ago, my husband planted a raspberry bush in our backyard near the garden.  We didn't know how it would do and if it would produce many berries.  Even in its first year, it produced more raspberries than we could even eat!  Now each summer, I'm looking for easy recipes that use up these tasty berries before they get too mushy.  A quick Pinterest search turned up this super easy recipe from a blog called Apple a Day.  The only challenge is that you have to let the mixture set for at least 4 hours, so you'll want to plan ahead if you're planning to serve this.

In terms of special equipment--you'll need a blender or food processor to start and an ice cream maker to finish this off.  We have an older model which was a wedding present, but this one looks great, too. You always want to chill the base before use. (We just keep it in our freezer all the time so we can have ice cream whenever we want.)

The kiddo and I decided to tackle this on a particularly hot day last week.  We assembled our ingredients and got to work.

To start, we blended the berries, milk and sugar in our blender.  We then poured it into a glass bowl (the recipe recommends a "non-reactive" bowl) then mixed in the heavy cream until combined.  You don't want to whip the cream too much!

We folded in our lime juice (thought that would be a great combo with the raspberry) and covered the bowl and refrigerated the mixture for a few hours.

After a nap, workout and walk around the block, I got out the ice cream maker.  Here's where you want to follow the directions for your specific model of ice cream maker.  Every model will be a little different.  Also, check your machine's capacity.  Our model was too small to accommodate this entire recipe, so we had to do it in two batches.  After I did a little math to figure that out, we started the machine.  With ours, it ran for about 25 minutes until it thickened and turned off the machine.  Looks a lot like gelato to me!

Then I put it back into the freezer for a few hours to harden up while the second batch churned.  Then we dug into it post-dinner!

It was delicious and super fresh tasting.  The hint of lime was perfectly summery!  I loved that we could use our raspberries, but you could sub in any berries or fresh fruit.  Once the Red Haven Peaches are out, we plan to try those!

Would you try making gelato at home?  If you give it a try, let us know in the comments how it turned out!