Monday, September 7, 2009

Sorbet!

Our family loves ice cream. It is our go-to dessert of choice. Especially Blue Bell Ice Cream. If you've never lived in Texas, it might be hard to understand a Texan's fascination with this particular brand of ice cream, but it is really, really good.



But with our allergies, Blue Bell Ice Cream went out of our diets. They use corn syrup to sweeten their ice cream, and we have to eliminate corn from Ethan's diet, and all the rest of us have to rotate it, so it's just not worth it. But we can still have milk twice a week, so my quest for a corn free ice cream began. I only found one. May I introduce Hagen-Dazs five ice cream?

Behold, my new ice cream obsession! All of the flavors in this line are good. All of them only have milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and one other flavor. But this one, the brown sugar flavor, is so incredibly good that I have to close my eyes and savor each bite! I purposely left eggs and milk on the same day of our rotation so that this ice cream can remain in our diets (oh, and because most baked goods are better with both eggs and milk together...)! This flavor is rich and creamy and has an almost burnt sugar flavor that is like a super rich caramel. I can guarantee you that on Tuesday and Friday evenings, you will find me with a scoop of this ice cream in my evening snack bowl!

Anyway, you may wonder with a title of "Sorbet!" why I speak only of ice cream. Our love of a daily scoop has led me to find milk free alternatives. Sorbet is the obvious answer! I do have a coconut milk ice cream recipe I still want to try, but I started with sorbet. First I made a watermelon sorbet that had just pureed watermelon, lemon juice, and a simple syrup in it. It was so very good! But it did have a problem. Most sorbets share this same problem: after a couple days in the freezer, it is impossible to get a good scoop out of the container even if you let it warm on the counter for a few minutes before scooping it! The watermelon sorbet still tastes good, but the presentation is awful! So I started to think about this problem and what kind of solution would work. I know some people add vodka to their homemade ice cream and sorbet to keep it from freezing solid, but my sorbet needs to be family friendly, so no vodka here! I decided to turn to honey for sweetening. Sure enough, the addition of honey helps keep the sorbet scoopable. It still needs a "warming" period before scooping, but after that, I am able to make nice, pretty round scoops of this! You should try the recipe, it can be used with any fruit and is so forgiving! You can add more or less of each thing, or even add additional ingredients. As long as you end up with the same amount of liquid to go into the ice cream maker at the end, it should work!

I started with three very large, over-ripe mangoes. Sorbet is a great way to use up fruit that is a bit too ripe to enjoy plain.

Chop up the mangoes and puree them in a food processor or blender. This is the base of the sorbet.

To the base, add 1/2 to 1 cup simple syrup and 2-4 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice. (To make a simple syrup, boil 1 part water with 2 parts sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Allow this to cool before using it.) I added 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup simple sugar, and 2 Tbsp. lime juice. After mixing all the ingredients together, put them into your ice cream maker and let it run for about 30 minutes.


This is the lovely sorbet when it is soft set! Mmmmm.....I like to freeze mine for several hours before serving it, but it is yummy right away!

Here's a scoop of the mango sorbet on top of some of the watermelon sorbet shavings! A yummy combo!

5 comments:

Joanna said...

Cool, that looks so yummy. We make our own ice cream much of the time and it only have 4 or 5 ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, vanilla and sometimes chocolate chips. Yum.

Joanna said...

has...not have

Anonymous said...

*bowing* You are awesome. That looks so gooooood, and I am going to have to try it sometime!!!

M said...

My brother is allergic to milk products also. He goes into anaphlactic shock if he has a drop of milk. (I know I spelled it worng but you probably figured it out right? Cause you are just smart like that) Anyways, the bland cereals are a lot better with the juices, if it is too sweet of a cereal it conflicts with the sweetness of the juice. Whole sorbet is the "ice cream" he gets. He and his wife have to home make a lot of the foods, my brother can't eat out most places. He married a japanesse girl and they don't use a lot of milk in their cooking so that helps.

Lyn said...

Johanna--next time you make this remember your dear old mom!