[1] Spumoni, an ice cream treat for the eye and the palate (photo © Lezza).

[2] Spumoni Baked Alaska. Just use the conventional spumoni flavors in any Baked Alaska recipe. Here’s the recipe for this one (photo © Taste Of Home).

[3] For an easy spumoni ice cream cake, layer the flavors in a loaf pan or terrine lined with parchment so you can pull the frozen loaf up by the parchment handles. Then, cover the ice cream with slices of your favorite cake, and re-freeze until ready to serve (photo © Buona Restaurants | Facebook).

[4] Spumoni cupcakes are a fusion of spumoni and ice cream cake, a miniature ice cream cake with spumoni’s multi-flavors. See how to do it below (photo © Hey There Cupcakes Shoppe).

[5] The easiest way to celebrate: a spumoni sundae (A.I. photo).

August 21st is one of the year’s 50+ ice cream holidays: National Spumoni Day.

Spumoni (spoo-MOE-photo #1) is Neapolitan specialty, with layers of three or four different colored and flavored ice cream: Chocolate, pistachio, and cherry are a popular combination, with vanilla as a fourth.

But you can use any flavors you like, and even throw in some sorbet.

There’s much more to say about this charming ice cream creation, but first:

> The different types of frozen desserts.

> The history of ice cream.

> The history of spumoni is below.
 
 
SPUMONI: ONE OF OUR FAVORITE FROZEN DESSERTS

It’s a fancy dessert that’s easy to make. While photo #1 shows four flavors (cherry vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio ice creams, plus raspberry sorbet) in a fancy design, you can make a simple spumoni terrine by layering chocolate, pistachio, and cherry ice cream (3 cups each).

 
 
RECIPE #2: SPUMONI ICE CREAM CUPCAKES

This spumoni cupcake has a cake base topped with three flavors of ice cream.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. Slice the loaf cake in 1″ wide pieces, and use a cookie or biscuit cutter to cut circles that will fit on the bottom of the cupcake liners. Top

2. Scoop a round ball of ice cream atop each cupcake. Place in the freezer. Don’t garnish until ready to serve.

3. At serving time, garnish with your favorite sundae toppings: chocolate sauce, butterscotch sauce, whipped cream and a cherry. If you like, gild the lily with chopped nuts, mini chips, sprinkles or other favorites.

> There are more fun cupcake recipes below.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF SPUMONI

The predecessor of spumoni was a light Italian dessert called spuma (SPOO-mah singular, spume, SPOO-may, plural), meaning foam.

In the days before freezing ice cream was easy, fruit sherbet was stabilized (blended) with a large amount of Italian meringue (cooked, beaten egg white sweetened with hot sugar syrup) or whipped cream.

By the mid–late 19th century, pastry cooks were molding layered, semi-frozen “spumone napoletano” (Neapolitan, or “from Naples” spumoni), slicing it like a cake.

Spumoni means “big foam.”

The hand-cranked ice cream freezer had been invented in the U.S. in 1843, allowing the production of ice cream/gelato that was firm enough to mold.

The culinary pioneer of spumoni was Naples, in the region of Campania in southwestern Italy, followed by efforts Salento in the region of Apulia in the southeast.

The churned gelato was added to molds that were then placed in ice-and-salt freezers to set until firm enough to unmold and slice (a soft semifreddo† texture).

The colorful desert was made from three or four different flavors/colors of gelato, typically cherry, chocolate, pistachio, and vanilla as a fourth flavor.
 
 
Classic Additions

Often added were candied fruits (amarena cherries, citron, orange peel), nuts (pistachios, almonds), chocolate bits, a ribbon of liqueur (typically maraschino or alchermes, a cinnamon-clove liqueur), and/or layer of sponge cake.

As flavors of gelato increased, amaretto (almond), coffee, hazelnut (gianduja), stracciatella (vanilla with shards of chocolate), and strawberry were also used.

In the late 1800s–early 1900s, Italian immigrants brought their spumoni recipes to Argentina, Canada, and the U.S., where the frozen treat became a fixture in Italian bakeries and restaurants.

In the U.S., a simplified variation without the extra nuts and fruits was developed. The “Neapolitan” ice cream brick of layered chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla ice cream, available at grocers to the delight of children (and all ice cream lovers).

Today: Spumoni remains a holiday/special-occasion dessert in parts of Italy and a nostalgia dessert in North American Italian eateries. In the U.S. you’ll most often see the pistachio–cherry (amarena)–chocolate trio.

We don’t understand why more Italian restaurants that have a freezer for ice cream don’t offer spumoni, too.

It’s both elegant and fun. There are fine wholesalers who will deliver the spumoni ready-made to the restaurannt. Why the resistance?
 
 
MORE CUPCAKE RECIPES

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*It became possible to freeze ice cream at home in 1843 with Nancy M. Johnson’s patent for the first hand-cranked ice cream freezer. Her invention provided a practical and efficient way to churn and freeze ice cream by combining a metal cylinder, a crank-turned dasher, and an outer bucket for a mixture of ice and rock salt, replacing less efficient, labor-intensive methods.

†Semifreddo is called frozen soufflé in English. It may look like ice cream, but it isn’t ice cream per se. It is more of a frozen mousse, produced by combining equal parts of ice cream and whipped cream.
 
 
 

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