Health & Recipes

Gianduia Parfait with macadamia nuts

A gianduia parfait, is like an ice-cream, but the difference between a parfait and an ice-cream is if you're using ice-cream you need an ice-cream machine to aerate the mixture while it's freezing. With a parfait, the cream is already whipped, which gives it the aeration, so when the mixture is frozen it doesn't set like an ice. It's got the air holes in it so it's like an ice-cream.

Degree of difficulty: High
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: Cooling time 24 hours

Gianduia Parfait

10 egg yolks (or half an emu egg)
60 ml of Tia Maria
200g of sugar
a bain marie
thickened cream
1 cup of crushed macadamia nuts
flexi-pan mould (or lamington tray) (Lisa uses a loaf shape flexi-pan)
250 grams of grated Gianduia

Gianduia
Gianduia originating from Turin in Italy, is a creamy smooth mixture of chocolate and hazelnuts. It can be made with either milk or dark chocolate. Almonds can be used instead of or with hazelnuts to make Gianduia, but hazelnuts are usual. Gianduia is used in the same way as chocolate is in cooking to add a slightly different flavour.

Melt Gianduia

Place grated Gianduia in a saucepan and melt over another saucepan of simmering water until all dissolved. Keep for later

Make Gianduia Parfait

1. Whip 10 egg yolks, Tia Maria, 200g of sugar over a bain-marie in a heat proof bowl.

2. Keep whipping it over boiling water. You don't need a lot of water in the pot. You just need the steam to sort of start cooking the egg yolks. The Tia Maria liquid with the egg yolks will help aerate it a little bit. If you don't have the liquid in there it tends to be a bit stiff and sticky.

3. Take it to a ribbon stage, i.e. whisk in the shape of an eight. When you can still see the first line of the eight by the time you finish the end of the eight, it's ready.

4. When it’s pretty thick and holds its shape. Take it off the heat.
5. Now, whisk it till it loses its temperature a bit.
6. Add the Gianduia you melted previously, and fold that through.

7. Mix it until it chills a bit. Be patient and wait for it to cool down slightly.
8. Fold in macadamia nuts. Don’t beat it.
9. Add a litre of whipped cream into it. Keep the aeration of the cream because that's what's going to give it the ice-cream texture. You'd add grated gianduia or praline or caramelized sugar (i.e. textual ingredients) now too.

10. Put it into a flexi-pan mould. The only problem with these flexi pans is the cheaper ones aren't as solid, so when you put them in the freezer, you'll obviously have to put something either side to hold the shape (like 2 glasses).

TIP: Get a cheap you-beaut flexi pan mould from a kitchen store, and you can cook cakes, biscuits, anything in it and it's completely flexible. If you don't have one of these, you can use anything from a lamington tray to any type of mould - cups, anything.

10. Put it in the freezer for at least 24 hours.

Cut and serve

1. Turn it out of the flexi pan and cut into serves using a knife dipped in a container of hot water ('cause that'll make it easier to cut the ice-cream). We made triangles.