This rich and creamy peach gelato highlights one of summer’s quintessential fruits to perfection: fresh peach puree is both mixed into the gelato and rippled through it for a double dose of stone fruit sweetness. {Jump to Recipe}

What’s your favorite dessert to make with fresh peaches? Crisps and cakes are always at the top of my list, but I also like to use them to make special occasion desserts such as cream puffs. This year though, my new favorite peach treat is a rich and beautifully fruity gelato.

This Fresh Peach Gelato combines my go-to super creamy Sicilian Gelato Base with fresh peach puree, which is both mixed into the base and then swirled into the frozen gelato, and diced peach too. The result is a wonderfully peach-forward frozen treat, perfect for celebrating summer’s most aromatic stone fruit.

Ripe peaches will provide the purest, juiciest flavor to this fresh peach gelato. Here are tips to help you pick the best peaches to make this recipe.

How to Tell When a Peach Is Ripe

You can find out when a peach is ripe and ready to eat based on two factors: smell and touch. An underripe peach doesn’t give off any significant aroma, whereas a ripe peach smells like peach pie or peach jam. Smelling a ripe peach should make your mouth water.

A ripe peach should also feel soft to your very gentle touch. You can easily bruise a ripe peach by pressing it firmly with a finger. If peaches bruise simply by sitting on the counter or against one another, it means they’re probably overripe. Overripe peaches might be too soft for some uses, but they provide amazing flavor to this fresh peach gelato.

How to Make Peaches Ripen Off the Tree

Unless you live close to where peaches are grown, fresh peaches you’ll buy at the store will likely be underripe. Peaches are shipped underripe to ensure they won’t be turned to mush during transportation.

To ripen peaches at home, set peaches on a side layer over a large plate and let them rest on your kitchen countertop, checking on them twice a day. If there’s a window nearby, placing peaches in the warmth of the sun to help. Underripe peaches can take up to three days to ripen. (See tips to speed up this process below.)

Once peaches are ripe, they can turn to mush pretty quickly, so either eat or use them right away, or refrigerate them to stop the ripening process (make sure to use ripe refrigerated peaches within two days). Continue Reading