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Home-made Crema di Limoncello

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A tutorial on how to make home-made Crema di Limoncello - the traditional Italian way!


Author Manuela Zangara

Ingredents
8 lemons home grown or untreated
½ lt – 2 cups alcohol 95% or 151 proof grain alcohol or 650 ml – 2 ¾ cups Vodka
½ lt – 2 cups fresh cream
½ lt – 2 cups milk
1 kg – 5 cups sugar
1 vanilla pod

Instructions

Peel the lemons, removing as much of the white part from the peel as possible otherwise this will make your Crema di Limoncello bitter.
Put the lemon peels in a jar with all the alcohol. Close it with a tight lid and keep it in a cool, dark place for 30 days.

When the 30 days have passed, put the sugar in a pot with the milk, cream and scraped vanilla pod and heat it on the fire until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside until completely cold.
Add this mixture to the lemon peel and alcohol mixture (which will be yellow by now) and mix well.
Filter it and bottle it.

make some when I can , lots lemons out the back now

I was talking about this with my little brother a few weeks ago, definitely will give this a try! Do you need to store this in the refrigerator and how long can you store it??

Thanks for the recipe!

I found this statement about Creme dementhe a while ago and it seemed to make sense to me.

Air and heat are the enemies here. While it won't technically go bad, exposing it to heat and air will eventually change the taste. Probably not in a good way. Besides evaporation, exposure to air leads to chances of picking up funky tastes,much like food in your fridge.

Keep the bottle sealed in a cool place away from sunlight, and it should last for years.

Personally I drink it within a couple months of opening. I also found the following similar info about Baileys. I would think this would also apply to this drink.

BAILEYS SHELF LIFE. Baileys is the only cream liqueur that guarantees its taste for 2 years from the day it was made, opened or unopened, stored in the fridge or not when stored away from direct sunlight at a temperature range of 0-25 degrees centigrade.

If you peel the lemons with a potato peeler you can avoid the white stuff.

Geoff

The lemons dont ever curdle the cream?

The Baker wrote:If you peel the lemons with a potato peeler you can avoid the white stuff.

Geoff

I prefer a microplane.

since it takes about 18 large lemons to make limoncello cream, for a liter of alcohol, is there a system to shorten the 30 days of infusion?
us with our systems ....
gin basket type,
   can we get the same result? with less lemons and especially less time?

yupiteru wrote:since it takes about 18 large lemons to make limoncello cream, for a liter of alcohol, is there a system to shorten the 30 days of infusion?

One nuke will do it. I've successfully made finished limoncello in 24 hours.
viewtopic.php?t=38991

yupiteru wrote:us with our systems ....
gin basket type,
can we get the same result? with less lemons and especially less time?

A gin basket won't get you the color unless it is designed to have a very high vapor speed, not something I would recommend, and it won't magically conjure up lemon flavors from zest it hasn't got.

6-7 years ago I was making a lot of Lemoncello, I discovered that the best way to get skin with absolutely no pith was to use one of these https://www.ebay.com.au/i/322385873227?chn=ps" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow They usually come with spare blades and do a great job.
You will make the whole process a lot faster by using high proof Neutral to soak the peels, 92% or higher will extract all colour and flavour in about 5-7 days. By then the peels will be white and brittle like a potato crisp / chip.
The variety and quality of lemon used makes a large difference to what you end up with.
I once made 4 different batches at the same time, all 4 used different lemon types and or lemons from different trees. Each batch tasted different, some were much better than others.

NZChris wrote:

yupiteru wrote:since it takes about 18 large lemons to make limoncello cream, for a liter of alcohol, is there a system to shorten the 30 days of infusion?

One nuke will do it. I've successfully made finished limoncello in 24 hours.
viewtopic.php?t=38991

yupiteru wrote:us with our systems ....
gin basket type,
can we get the same result? with less lemons and especially less time?

A gin basket won't get you the color unless it is designed to have a very high vapor speed, not something I would recommend, and it won't magically conjure up lemon flavors from zest it hasn't got.

OK, better to follow the traditional system 30 days are not so many,
maybe the right thing,
first prepare a lot of alcohol abv 90 or more, with lemon peel, then filter and store the product that should be stored for a long time,
example 5 liters of alcohol,
as needed, it is taken and used and replaced with a new alcohol infusion plus lemon peels