Every Day Is Special: August 21 – National Spumoni Day in the U.S.A.

August 21 – National Spumoni Day in the U.S.A.

Posted on August 21, 2019

Italian food! What would the world do without it?

Pizza and pasta and polenta and risotto...marinara and carbonara and alfredo and bolognese...focaccia and all sorts of other Italian breads and garlic breads...Ahh! I love it; don't you?

But how to end a delicious Italian meal?

A classic Italian dessert is gelato. This frozen treat is like ice cream, but it has a lot less butterfat. (About 4 - 8 % in gelato, about 14% in ice cream.) Gelato also has less air and water than most ice cream. Because of the low-fat content, gelato is served at a slightly less-cold temperature - and that means that the flavor is stronger; of course, the flavor isn't diluted with so much air and water, as well.

Gelato often comes in a BUNCH of different flavors.
Fruit flavors, obviously - everything from lemon and
raspberry to mango and pineapple.
But gelato can also be found in alcohol-infused
flavors, coffee flavors, chocolatey or vanilla-ish
flavors, and combo flavors with nuts or other
tasty tidbits (like caramels, marshmallows, cookie
chunks, coconut, etc.) stirred in.

BUT did you know that gelato can even come in
savory flavors? How about balsamic, basil and
tomato, olive oil and parmesan cheese?

Gelato has a more velvety texture than ice cream. It melts in your mouth more quickly (remember, it's served a bit less cold), and it isn't meant to be stored long term, so it's fresher, as well.

Another amazing thing about gelato is all the flavors! Today we celebrate molded gelato with multiple flavors! Spumoni is traditionally made with three flavors: cherry, pistachio, and either chocolate or vanilla. One or more flavors may contain bits of fruit and nuts - such as cherry bits in the cherry gelato, and chopped pistachio nuts in the pistachio gelato - or the desert may be topped with fruit and nuts. The traditional color combination is pink and green and brown (or pink, green, and off-white).

As soon as I started writing about Spumoni, I started wondering about another multiple-layers, multiple-colors frozen Italian treat: Neapolitan ice cream. Sure enough, according to my sources, Neapolitan (named for the Italian city of Naples) is considered a form of Spumoni. The ice cream found here in the U.S. has been tweaked to match up with typical American flavor preferences: strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla.

Uh, no! I'm pretty typical "American," but I think I like the traditional Italian flavors of Spumoni way more!