Italy's ice cream university is recession hit

An Italian "university" dedicated to ice cream has seen a 90 per cent rise in enrolments as high-flying executives laid off in the recession seek to forge new careers producing the country's beloved gelato.

More than 6,000 people attended the £600-a-week courses offered by the Gelato University in Bologna in 2008 but enrolments nearly doubled last year. Students come from all over the world, with budding gelato maestros attending from Australia, China, Sudan, Lebanon and Britain. They have one dream in common: to learn how to make the world's best ice cream in the institute's high-tech laboratories and then use their new-found expertise to open gelaterie back home, from Beirut to Brighton. As well as learning how to concoct familiar flavours such as chocolate and vanilla, students experiment with more outlandish tastes, including gelato made from red wine, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and basil. "In China they have experimented with fish-flavoured gelato," said Patrick Hopkins, the American director of the university, which was established in 2003... Telegraph