Gelato panini: How did the “ice cream in a roll” native to Sicily evolve?
“Gelato panini was served to us by my mother when I was young,” recalls Barbario Barbieri, a Sicilian who met at the Sudback bakery fair in Stuttgart. “It was creamy homemade ice cream served in yeast.” – he adds. The seemingly simple dessert took on a whole new dimension quite recently… in the United States. In building new trends, Americans are masters – including in the ice cream business. How do you tweak gelato con brioche? Just heat the bun for a few seconds in a special toaster to make it warm and fragrant again. But what about the ice cream? Won’t they melt in the middle? It turns out that the air bubbles in the structure of the bun provide excellent thermal insulation, which prevents heat from getting inside. It is thanks to baking that the ice cream we all love so much gets a multidimensional makeover, and the traditional Sicilian dessert of years ago is conquering more continents.
What else besides ice cream can be added to the center?
The recipe for gelato panini does not end with the combination of ice cream and brioche. The inner side of the buns can be spread with Nutella, salted peanut butter or fruit frużelina. In addition to ice cream, Marshmallows, jelly bears, crumbled crunchy oatmeal cookies or candy bars, pieces of sour-tasting fruit (strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, pomegranate seeds) can go inside. The composition is completed with sweet dessert sauces.
The most important thing – the WOW effect!
In the era of smartphones and the trend of food porn* (taking pictures of exquisite meals and adding them to Facebook, Instagram*), it is very important that the meal served to the customer causes a WOW effect, which in turn is often accompanied by reaching for the phone and “snapping a photo” on Instagram, for example. Very important in the perception of a product is its visual aspect, for the reason that sight is the sense that dominates our perception. With a little effort put into the original, fine decoration of the dessert, we have a chance for free advertising in social media, which will help attract new customers. At the same time, the person who experienced the WOW effect will definitely become a regular at our establishment.
How do you get the effect of delighting the recipient with Gelato Panini?
First of all, our ice burger should be cut in half to show what’s inside. Any dessert served on a plate looks more exquisite, so if possible, use this trick. If, on the other hand, you are serving ice cream rolls to take away or don’t have room for a dishwasher, it’s worth buying paper ice cream cups up to 3 cm high. Fantasy is the key to success. It is important to make it colorful and fun, e.g: – whipped cream and colorful sprinkles, – toothpicks with mini flags on which we will put funny inscriptions, – mini syringes filled with sweet pine for self-dosing, – marshmallows fueled by the customer on a skewer toothpick, – decorations made of fruit.
The latest trend is “Lodoburgers,” or stuffing self-baked buns with sweets.
This is made possible by a device called Gelato Panini Press. The pan shape of this unusual waffle iron is adapted not only for reheating, but also for baking your own buns, but about the device later. The advantage of this method is that there is no dependence on bakery supplies, no problem with stale stocks and wasted or declining quality of the finished product. It costs several times less to prepare sweet baked goods on site without the supplier’s markup and frequent transportation.
