Sundae Sunday: Spumoni Anyone?

In celebration of July being National Ice Cream Month, Di from Di's Kitchen Notebook is hosting an old-fashioned ice cream social, Sundae Sunday. The last time I hosted an ice cream social I was in college. My roommates and I decided to have some of our friends over for banana splits only we didn't have enough dishes for everyone so we covered our kitchen table top with saran wrap and put the bananas, ice cream, nuts, syrups, and other toppings in the middle of the table and everyone created their banana splits and ate them right from the table. It was actually so much fun and the clean up was a breeze!

For this ice cream social I decided to make spumoni mostly because heavy cream is so expensive here, but also because it is a little lighter than regular ice cream, so you can eat it almost guilt-free. Spumoni is an Italian ice cream and I always look forward to eating some at the end of our spaghetti meals at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Spumoni is the perfect after dinner dessert. It is smooth and creamy and cleanses your palate.

I made three different flavors from one base: almond, chocolate, and pistachio. You can find the recipe at epicurious.com. I followed the recipe exactly except I added some dark chocolate and mint chips that I had on hand to the chocolate. Each flavor was delicious. Did I have a favorite? Hmm...I think I might need to eat some more to decide. For the rest of my family the first choice was pistachio, followed closely by chocolate, and then the almond. Now that I have an ice cream maker, there is simply no excuse not to have ice cream socials all the time and my family heartily agrees.

Thank you, Di, for hosting Sundae Sunday! She has a great blog, so please stop by and visit. She is also going to have a round up of everyone's Sundae Sunday posts in the next few days, so be sure to check it out. I can't wait to see what the other guests made and collect more ice cream recipes.