Inner West Gelato Legends Head to Italy

The Gelato World Tour pulls together artisan gelato makers from all over the world. Their task is to present festivalgoers with a creative gelato flavour that best represents their shop. Sam Crowl, son and right-hand-man of father, John, at Cow & the Moon is taking local favourite, Mandorla Affogato, to Italy.

Recently, Cow & the Moon held an event with espresso partners, Single Origin Roasters. Customers and friends were invited to vote for one of seven special espresso blends to include in the final recipe of its award-winning gelato. As a proud local shop, it was important that customers were involved. “Funnily enough, our customers voted for the blend that the Single Origin team had secretly pre-selected as the favourite,” Crowl tells us.

The espresso is of Kenyan origin with a strong, robust profile intended to stand alone as an individual element, rather than just a flavour, in the gelato. It is swirled into the salted caramel sauce, roasted into the caramelised almonds and finally, mixed through Madagascan Vanilla Bean gelato. The selected Single Origin blend will, “punch through the rich caramel and vanilla flavours,” says Crowl.

Held in Rimini, on the east coast of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, the World Tour is a celebration of gelato from all over the world, with competitors from as far and wide as Dubai, Australia, Germany and beyond. Each team will produce 300 litres of gelato for the event, with prep and production starting a few days before the competition. “Every element of the Mandorla Affogato is made from scratch, which is a huge part of why we chose this flavour,” says Crowl.

Sam will be pulling more than 300 shots of espresso in less than two hours to make the caramel sauce on site. “The logistics of creating this gelato for the Melbourne Gelato World Tour were challenging,” says Crowl, “so Italy should be really interesting.”

gelatoworldtour.com