Goat cheese gelato with honey and figs

A whole cheeseboard in a scoop: tangy goat cheese, honey and fresh figs. Savoury and sweet at once, and entirely logical.

Goat cheese with honey and figs is a combination familiar to anyone who has ever been handed a cheeseboard. It works even better frozen, because the cold tames the sharper notes of goat milk and lets the acidity and salt come forward. The cheese is not just flavour here — it brings fat and milk solids too, so very little cream is needed and the gelato stays inside its fat range.

Type: Italian gelato · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 495 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 60 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 30 g skimmed milk powder
  • 130 g fresh goat cheese (chèvre frais) (fresh and soft (chèvre frais) — not a ripened, rinded cheese)
  • 70 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 25 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 85 g honey (flower or acacia honey; stirred into the lukewarm mix)
  • 120 g fresh figs (about 3 ripe figs, blended skin and all)

Making the mix

  1. Pour the milk, cream and milk powder into a pan and heat while stirring. At about 40 °C add the granulated sugar and dextrose and stir until dissolved.
  2. Heat the mix to 85 °C and hold it there for 1–2 minutes, stirring constantly.
  3. Take the pan off the heat and let the mix cool to about 60 °C. Then stir in the goat cheese a spoonful at a time and blend smooth with a stick blender.
  4. Once the mix drops below 40 °C, stir in the honey. Do not add it to a hot mix — you would lose its aroma.
  5. Wash the figs, trim the stems and blend them to a purée with about a ladleful of the mix. Stir it back in.
  6. Stand the jug in iced water and cool the mix below 5 °C. Cover and age in the fridge for 4–12 hours.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch the ice cream maker on 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Give the aged mix a quick blitz with a stick blender and pour it into the bowl, no higher than the fill line. Churn for 30–40 minutes, until it thickens and clings to the paddle.
  3. Transfer to a chilled tub, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 8 h 39 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the bowl, frozen for at least 24 hours, out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the well-chilled, freshly blended mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the mix thickens to a soft cream. There is no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled tub, cover with cling film and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

A freezer bowl only partly freezes the mix, so the ice cream takes longer to harden and tends to be slightly less smooth than from a compressor machine. A thoroughly chilled, properly aged mix helps.

Total time: 9 h 29 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a CREAMi tub up to the MAX line, put the lid on and freeze it level for 24 hours.
  2. Put the tub in the machine and run the Gelato program.
  3. If the result is crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and run Re-spin.

Programme: Gelato

Total time: 30 h 9 min

Stages

Preparation
20 min
Cooking
14 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
5 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
8 h 39 min

Plan: what to do and when

The whole recipe takes 8 h 39 min, of which 34 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.

The day before (6 h 4 min)

  • Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 20 min
  • Cook the mix — 14 min
  • Cool the mix down — 30 min
  • Let the mix age in the fridge — 5 h

On the day of serving (2 h 35 min)

  • Churn in the machine — 35 min
  • Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h

Serving and storage

Serve with a drizzle of honey, a handful of toasted walnuts and a grind of black pepper — or straight after a cheeseboard, as the dessert course. Gelato is served at −11 to −13 °C, warmer than cream ice cream. Move the tub to the fridge 15–20 minutes before serving and work it with a spatula before scooping.

In a sealed tub with cling film pressed onto the surface it is best within a week; after that ice crystals build up.

Tips

  • Do not give honey to children under 1 year — it can contain spores of the bacterium that causes infant botulism, and cooking does not destroy them. For small children, replace it with 60 g of invert sugar syrup or granulated sugar.
  • Out of season, use 100 g of dried figs soaked in hot water for 20 minutes; dried figs are sweeter, so take 20 g of sugar out.
  • If you want the cheese to show more, keep the dose and add a teaspoon of lemon juice — the acidity pushes the cheese forward without thickening the mix.

Why it works

The goat cheese contributes 22 g of fat and 23 g of milk solids, so 60 g of cream is enough and fat stays at 5.9 % — comfortably inside the gelato range of 4–10 %. Honey and figs are flavour and technique at once: both are rich in fructose and glucose, which have almost twice the anti-freezing power of granulated sugar. That is why the recipe needs only 25 g of dextrose and the PAC still lands at 31.5 — the gelato scoops soft straight from the freezer. The cheese also acidifies the mix, which with milk proteins means a thicker, fuller texture.

Related recipes

How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator

Sources