Lemon gelato is an amazingly refreshing frozen dessert that will tantalize your taste buds with its fresh lemon flavor and creamy texture. Made with heavy cream and milk lets the bright, fresh lemony flavor shine through!
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To make my lemon gelato (which can be made in your ice cream maker), you need fresh lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, heavy whipping cream, milk, and a dash of salt. No egg yolks are needed!
Gelato isn’t that much different from ice cream. The big difference is that milk is used instead of all cream, which actually makes the flavors of what you’re using stand out even more. If you find the right balance between cream and milk, you still get that rich, creamy texture that Americans have come to love about our ice cream!
Ingredients to Make Lemon Gelato
Gather the ingredients to prepare our Easy Lemon Gelato recipe. Culinary professionals call this the “Mise en Place,” which means “everything in its Place.”
Setting up your ingredients not only helps speed up the cooking process but also ensures you have all the necessary ingredients on hand to make the recipe.
*I originally made this gelato with Meyer Lemons, so either variety is good.
How to Make Lemon Gelato
Follow along with my simple step-by-step instructions to learn how to make Lemon Gelato in your home kitchen.
It’s really easy to make my version of Lemon Gelato (lemon ice cream). All you need are a few simple ingredients to make this gelato/ice cream recipe.
- Add the cream, milk, lemon juice, zest, sugar, and salt together. Using a wire whip, mix until the sugar dissolves and is completely incorporated (the mixture should thicken some).
- Pour the lemon mixture into a gelato or ice cream maker.
- Allow the mixture to freeze.
- When the gelato mixture has sufficiently frozen, place it in a container and allow the lemon gelato to freeze completely.
Can I Use an Ice Cream Maker to Make a Gelato Recipe?
Yes, you can. The difference between the two machines is gelato is churned at a much slower rate than ice cream, incorporating less air and leaving the gelato denser than ice cream.
Of course, if you don’t have a gelato maker, you can easily take my recipe for Lemon gelato and use your ice cream maker to make super creamy and delicious lemon ice cream.
So when life hands you lemons, make gelato. Your friends and family will be oh so happy that you did. Just be prepared for all the compliments and requests to make it again and again.
These are the Gelato Makers I recommend
Recipe FAQ’s
Ice cream has a higher butterfat content, which masks some of the natural flavors, where the creaminess of the ice cream is more of the star than the added flavor. Italian gelato uses less butterfat and also doesn’t whip the mixture as quickly, adding less air into the gelato. This makes the gelato denser and packs the flavor into each spoonful because of the density.
Five basic ingredients are needed to make gelato: heavy cream, milk, sugar, salt, and the flavoring you’ll be adding. Fresh fruit is my favorite added flavor when I make gelato, but you can easily make pistachio, chocolate, or any flavor you can imagine.
No, you don’t. Of course, you can make a custard-type base for your gelato using eggs, but that will require cooking the custard and allowing it to cool before freezing. The eggs will make the base richer, but eggs are not necessary for amazing gelato.
More Gelato Recipes You’ll Love!
Best Lemon Gelato Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup Lemon Juice about 6 lemons
- zest from one lemon very fine
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Using a micro-planer or a very fine grater, zest one Lemon
- Cut lemons in half and juice them, straining out all the seeds.
- Add the cream, milk, lemon juice, zest, sugar and salt together and using a wire whip, mix until the sugar is dissolved and completely incorporated. (the mixture should thicken some)
- Pour the mixture into a gelato or ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions.
- Yield will be about 1 quart of lemon gelato
thoma says
ha Meyers…have heard so much about them. we just wont get them here. and i realise you’ve a serious love for gelatos….i haven’t had them but loved your notes on it. your first photo is classic. i dunno… i just dont want to jump aboard any social network sites due to lack of time and interest. but sometimes i think should i try Pinterest….have heard rave reviews.
Sofie Dittmann @thegermanfoodie says
I’ve been wanting to get an ice cream maker, this may just be what pushes me over the edge. I have always loved lemon ice cream, but you can’t get it anywhere where it doesn’t taste like toothpaste. Putting this on my ever-growing list of “must-tries”. 🙂
Stephanie @ Eat. Drink. Love. says
Chef Dennis, thank you for your tips on Pinterest. I just saw that a couple of people have put my entire recipe with their pin. I went ahead and reported those pins! I LOVE Pinterest and a lot of my traffic is now coming from the site!
By the way, this gelato looks incredible! I love meyer lemons!
Jen says
I’m posting on Google+ everyday, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how best to make it worthwhile. I’m still not seeing any real traffic from it… I’m willing to keep at it though!
Chef D says
Hi Jen
I hate to tell you that its going to take a few months, it was probably 4 months for me before it really took off, but it really has paid off. are you also using your built in SEO on wordpress, that helps with google just as much.
if you have any questions please feel free to email me.
Dennis
Arlene @ Flour On My Face says
Yummy that gelato looks so refreshing! I’m loving Pinterest but I am having a hard time getting used to G+
Chef D says
Hi Arlene
it does take time, I still don’t get twitter and I barely use facebook, but Google+ just seems more interactive to me. Just keep posting on a regular basis and share to public, go down the stream and +1 posts, you’ll start to see it come together. Also remember all your old posts are new to these folks!
if you have any questions, please feel free to email me!
Dennis
Susan says
Can I freeze the gelato for a week?
Chef Dennis Littley says
hi Susan, you can freeze it for longer than a week, I’ve had gelato in my freezer for 6 weeks (went on vacation before I could eat it) and it was great. Just remember to give it time to thaw out, you want the consistency to be a little creamy
Terra says
I just tried Meyer lemons for my first time this week, and WOW just beautiful! I love the aroma of the lemons, really unique:-) I made lemon curd, but would love to make some gelato! The gelato looks amazing:-)
kitchenarian says
I don’t eat a lot of ice cream during the winter, butt now I really want some. Correction: I want some of this lemon gelato. Yum!
anne says
this looks fabulous and i LOVE pinterest!!
Question for you: I just switched over to word press and seem to have lost most of my followers, I know you did this recently, how did you get them back?? i believe I have updated my url on most sites but still my numbers are WAY down, any suggestions?? Thanks, Chef! Anne http://www.anniebakes.net
Chef D says
hi Anne
I wish I had an easy answer for you, but the truth is after 6 months I still get the occasional, I wonder where you went, your link has not been updating! when I first made the change my hits were cut in half, and contrary to what everyone told me about increasing just from Wordpress it never happened, at least for me. As I sorry I moved, not at all, I just wish I had done it sooner. It’s been an uphill battle recapturing all of my followers, some of it was also the name change, so at least you’re not tackling that one.
Did your designer, set up your old blog to redirect to your new site? I also actually bought the .net and .org of my domain and all of them including my old More Than A Mountfull, redirect to my new domain name.
Where you will start to see an increase is through the built in SEO in wordpress, I assume you are using it. Also don’t worry as much about reformatting your recipes as much as adding in the SEO to all your most popular posts, also you should put in a paragraph about the post, mine always started rambling about anything but the post, this way it can talk about what I made, and if I gave my post a cute name, I can change it for the SEO so that its more searchable.
if you have any questions please feel free to email me and I will be happy to help you.
Dennis
Bess says
I use Pinterest daily – however, do not list any of the sites as my own. It allows me to link (Pin It) so that it opens into the original owner’s blog or webpage. If others are stealing stuff then they are completely in the wrong but many of us on Pinterest are not out to do so.
Chef D says
Hi Bess
99.9% of those using Pinterest are doing it just for the fun, and I think most that pinning recipes aren’t necessarily stealing, they are just uninformed. Having our work lifted and spread around the internet has become a growing problem, with many people just trying to make money off of our work, so we tend act first now when ever we see an infraction. As a whole we love pinterest and have made many new friends from it.
cheers
Dennis
Irena says
Amazing looking dessert and can’t imagine how good does it taste. Pleas, take a look at my marshmallow creations, I would love to have your opinion, thank you so much:)
ohkeeka [The Type A Housewife] says
I just got an ice cream maker and I love anything involving lemon, so I am definitely going to save this recipe!
Thanks for the info about Pinterest too–I complained about people copying & pasting entire recipes to a pin in a blog post you commented on a few weeks back, but I had no idea that this was actually against Pinterest’s TOS and that the users would get a warning for it. This is really good information to know, as it’s happened to me a few times. Apart from the whole intellectual property thing, it’s also goes against the whole idea of Pinterest, which is a visual Pinboard NOT a text one. I’ve just put a copyright notice at the end of each of my posts (before I had it in my footer & About page), so I’m hoping that deters people from lifting content, including on Pinterest. But we’ll see!
EA-The Spicy RD says
Great post, not only for this fabulous lookinglemon gelato recipe, but also for the great tips on using Pinterest and Google Plus! I am loving Pinteerst, but had no idea you could type in someone’s name with the @ symbol when you pin their images, so I’ll definitely have to start doing that. If you like lemons, you might like my latest recipe for Kale, Pasta, and Pistachio Salad with lemon vinagrette 🙂 I’m doing the happy dance right now, because I have so many lemons on my Meyer’s Lemon tree!
Joan Hayes@chocolate and more says
Dennis, I actually saw this post on Pinterest. I love anything lemon! Will be repinning (from your pin)
Thanks for all the other wonderful information. I have a google + account but no idea how to use it, I think I have 4 friends in my circle right now? I would love any assistance you are willing to offer on that subject.
Cristina@the Scrappy Housewife recently did 2 posts about “Pintegrity”
Really great information.
Thanks for always posting the most delicious recipes.
Chef D says
HI Joan
thanks for the info I will check out the links. As for google+ the best advice on using google+ is to post something at once a day of your own work, and repost others work that you find interesting, maybe 2-3 a day. the biggest mistake I see is people don’t fill out their profile, and don’t post regularly, the other problem is that others flood your stream with too many posts, and they get themselves ignored very quickly! It’s like with your blog, people expect consistency and thats how you create a following. Remember all your old posts are new to these people too, so use them as fillers on off days from your posting schedule.
Dennis
Robyn says
Thank you for addressing these newer forms of social media. It takes some time to get used to new things. I just tried the “@” thing when pinning a fellow blogger’s photo, and it didn’t create a link or anything, so why do it? The picture links back to the blog post anyway, so I guess I just don’t see the point. Maybe I’m missing something…
I don’t feel like I’m breaching any kind of etiquette by pinning something without explicitly stating the blogger’s name because it links straight to their blog anyway. I personally like to write a really short sentence describing why I like or want to make whatever it is I’m pinning (i.e., great for a dinner party, freezer meals, etc). I realize typing out the whole recipe is overkill, but a little something to show what is great about that particular pin is nice, in my opinion.
I love Pinterest because it’s given me a place to visually store all the fantastic recipe and crafting/decorating ideas I come across on the internet every day. Before this I had no good way of remembering them for later. I have made many, many new recipes I might not have remembered to try otherwise!
Chef D says
hi Robyn
you are certainly not breaching any etiquette, using the @ is just like a shout out on one of the other social media platforms, not at all necessary but nice to do for your friends. I don’t do it for everyone, but when I am trying to give a friend a little extra recognition I use it.
Dennis
RavieNomNoms says
Chef the Gelato is amazing! I actually prefer it to ice cream any day of the week, so thank you so much for sharing this 🙂
Thanks for all your pointers about Pinterest. I am new to it and I want to make sure I follow the proper etiquette