Hazelnut Variegato (Ripple Cream)

Deep roasted nut on the tongue, soft and silky even straight from the freezer, sweet without any sugar grit and with a faint salty edge at the end.

Spread through a tub of gelato, this cream behaves nothing like a fruit sauce: there is no water in it to freeze, so it never turns icy, and it stays soft because its fat comes from oils that are liquid at room temperature rather than from hard fats. That is why the recipe follows the fat-based profile of the variegato ranges. Half the weight is unsweetened hazelnut paste, 500 g per kilo, with 169 g of sunflower oil to keep the cream flowing in the cold and 330 g of sugar ground to powder so it disappears on the tongue. A single gram of salt sharpens the roast.

With almost no water, PAC per 100 g of water and Brix do not apply here, and the page shows them for reference only. Three numbers count instead: sugars at 35 percent, the middle of a 30 to 40 band; fat at 47.9 percent inside 35 to 62; and water at 1 percent, under a 2 percent ceiling.

The oil is the lever. Sunflower oil has no flavour to fight the hazelnut and adds fat without adding water, which is exactly what the fat-based profile asks for. The paste brings 15 percent protein with it, so the cream reads rich without any dairy, and every ingredient on the sheet is plant based.

Ingredients

Makes 1000 g of finished base.

Method

No cooking: sugar ground to powder, blended into the paste and oil until smooth

1. 1Grind the sugar to a fine powder in a dry blender. With almost no water in the sauce, granulated sugar would never dissolve and would stay gritty.
2. 2Stir the nut paste, the oil and the salt together until smooth.
3. 3Add the powdered sugar and blend for several minutes, scraping down the sides, until no grain is left on the tongue.
4. 4Keep it covered at room temperature and stir before use: a little oil on top is normal.
5. 5Ripple it through the gelato as it comes out of the machine or the tray, in thin layers and without stirring it in, at 10 to 20% of the finished weight.

The balance

The sauce against the variegato ranges: PAC per 100 g of water and Brix take the place of the mix indicators.

Fat-based cream with almost no water: no ice forms, so PAC per 100 g of water and Brix are shown for reference only and the fat-based targets apply.

This is the fat-based profile of the variegato ranges, used when water is under 5 percent and fat is 25 percent or more. Water here is 1 percent and fat 47.9 percent, so the targets switch to sugars 30 to 40, fat 35 to 62 and water 0 to 2, and the solver centred all three. Sugars land at 35 percent from 330 g of sucrose plus the natural sugar in the paste, fat at 47.9 percent from the paste's own oil plus 169 g of sunflower oil, and water at 1 percent from the paste alone. PAC per 100 g of water and Brix are not checked for a cream like this, because with almost no water there is nothing to freeze.

Estimated nutrition: ~636 kcal · Fat 47.9 g · Sugars 35 g · Protein 7.5 g (per 100 g of mix, from the balanced composition).

If it goes wrong

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