Store-Bought Ice Cream Makes Traditional Spumoni A Breeze

Spumoni is a decadent dessert that you can find across Italy and at Italian eateries globally. The sweet treat is traditionally made with gelato mixed with ingredients like fruits, chocolate, and nuts, and topped with whipped cream. It can be confusing, but spumoni is different from Neapolitan ice cream because, while they appear similar, spumoni is the name of a complete dessert — not an ice cream flavor — and the two incorporate different flavors. You'll find traditional spumoni recipes calling for scratch-made gelato, like our roasted strawberry and black pepper gelato, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use your favorite store-bought ice cream to make the dessert at home.

For starters, store-bought ice cream will save you a lot of time when making homemade spumoni. It also will require less work and far fewer ingredients to make the dessert. The challenging part about spumoni is turning ingredients like cream and sugar into a smooth, tasty gelato, and the tub of ice cream in the back of your freezer eliminates that stress. Plus, you have free range of what flavors to use in your personal version of the Italian specialty.

If you want to stay true to Italian American spumoni, then use a combination of cherry, pistachio, chocolate, and vanilla ice creams. However, the plethora of ice cream brands at the grocery store work too. Swap in coffee ice cream if you want to serve a dessert with a little caffeine, or use fruity flavors like strawberry to keep it fresh. Since nuts traditionally go into spumoni, lean into the ingredient with butter pecan or walnut ice creams. For a birthday party, throw in some cake-flavored ice cream for the celebration.

As easy as store-bought ice cream is for making spumoni, there are some steps you must take to prepare. If you follow our traditional spumoni ice cream cake recipe you'll find these tips and more. The most important part is to allow the ice cream to soften so that it's easy to spread in the loaf pan. Then stir in whatever additions you're using, like chocolate or nuts, making sure they're evenly distributed in each bite. Once it's assembled, freeze it overnight so the store-bought ice cream has sufficient time to re-harden. That will guarantee a mess-free result when you go to cut, serve, and eat your homemade spumoni.