Tipsy Citrus Sorbet
I always had a thing for Bill Nye the Science Guy…know why? I love science! Science is very much a large component to ice cream making which is another reason why I love it. Science comes into play heavily with sorbet making because it’s figuring out the right balance between sugar and water. Sorbet itself is really easy to make but if you want a nice consistency and texture then strap on your goggles and fire up the Bunsen burner. (don’t)
Another culinary treat based on science is wine. I recently went to Napa Valley and picked up some bottles of white wine to experiment with….DOUBLE SCIENCE!
Ledson Orange Muscat
Orange Muscat Mugshot
When I tasted this wine, the synapses in the brain yelled “CITRUS. NOW.” I obliged and like the Beastie Boys, I wrangled up a trio of citrus fruits that I thought would pair (and rap) well together.
Grapefruit Mugshot
Tangerine Mugshot
Lemon Mugshot
I used a healthy 1/2 cup of wine because I wanted the muscat to come through and not just use it as a sorbet softener. The rest was up to the citrus trio which all played well together and I have to say to this is my new favorite sorbet flavor. It’s extremely refreshing for a spring day and I didn’t really want to share it with others but I sorta did.
Tipsy Citrus
(yes it is served in a frozen tangerine peel cup)
The texture is SPOT ON. It’s actually CREAMY which makes me squirm with excitement! Thank you science, you know how to make a girl grin. (the wine helps too)
Sorbange
“Sorbange” sounds very insurance-y but it’s what we are going to go with. It’s spring! In SF that doesn’t mean much temperature wise, but it does mean NO. MORE. RAIN! March is the new April here and it pours buckets, but it looks like that (fingers crossed) has passed so it’s time for some spring flavors! Spring to me mean is all about smells more than the temperature. Not so much in SF but growing up I always loved the smell of spring…the grass, the way the pavement smelled after months of snow sitting on it like a couch potato. Loved it. So for my rendition of spring I turn to what else, orange.
Left: Farmer's Market Right: Whole Foods
I can’t tell you the difference between coffee blends or if you should buy or lease a car, but I can pick out juicy oranges. As you can see above the one on the left is smaller, and the skin is smoother with less dinosaur-looking creases…you want this. As much as you want to get your bang for your buck, the smaller one is going to pack more juices because it’s smaller real estate. (It’s like Snooki from the Jersey shore, she’s short and packs a lot of ‘tude up in that leopard spandex ensemble.) Next is the “smooth” factor, the skin is smoother because it’s juicer and the juices push the skin out…I have zero scientific evidence of this, it’s just the synapses in my brain who are forcing me to type that.
I mimicked my method of freezing fruit and then blending it to get that cool and creamy texture I so long for in sorbet. I then added my trick (not anymore) of adding soju because it’s pretty flavorless and will aid in keeping the sorbet from completely freezing. How did we do?
Sorbange
Somangon Sorbet
Yes the title sounds like a character’s name from Avatar but in my world of ice cream Pandora, it stands for Soju + Mango + Lemon Sorbet. I really want to work on my sorbets this year, make ‘em creamy, full of flavor, and not icy…and by golly I think I’m onto something.
Just as a reminder, sorbets differ from ice cream in that they don’t contain any dairy…no milk or cream. They are basically just fruit, sugar and water. With that kind of roster, sorbets run into the situation where there is nothing preventing it from freezing like an igloo. The fat in dairy breaks up the freezing process in ice cream leaving it creamy. (Wow this is getting very Bill Nye.) Being the texture/creamy freak that I am, I am always seeking to make a creamy, thick sorbet. [Insert: mission impossible music]
I started off with this guy…
Mango Man Mug Shot
(That pretty orange mouth is a sign of a perfectly ripe mango.)
I picked up two other mangoes, one was crap-o-la and the inside looked like a network of misguided intent, it was kind of stringy which makes me dry heave. The other mango wasn’t quite ripe enough but it had potential, so basically I had one good mango and a sidekick of potential. I scratched my head for a second and remembered I had frozen mangoes in the freezer…EUREKA! Poured half a bag of frozen mangoes and watched wonderful things happen. THICK. CREAMY. EDIBLE CEMENT. The frozen mangoes when blended turned into a wonderful thick spread which will come into play later.
I also introduced mango man to Soju man because alcohol, like fat, breaks up the freezing process.
Soju Man
The results….
Somangon Sorbet
IT WAS CREAMY. [arm pump]. I think a lot had to do with the frozen mangoes which gets the unicycle wheel in my brain turning. Let’s just say……..I AM PUMPED for spring and summer where my Pandora will be bustling with frozen novelties such as this.
Dollup of Somangon
Mangood Sorbet
Man this was good mango sorbet, hence the name. This was a request from a pal at work who at first claimed “oh I don’t want any ice cream.” Ew. She got sense back in her and requested mango sorbet:
Mango Mugshot
I love the skin of a mango, it’s like a hypercolor shirt, each day it could be a different color. My latest goal for sorbets is trying to make them creamier and less icy. I researched and found only a handful of suggestions: increase the sugar, use alcohol or use some chemical sugar thing. I actually try to use less sugar than most recipes call for in sorbets because I want the fruit to come out more and I don’t think it really needs it. Alcohol does work effectively but I tried something new this time, salt. It makes sense because think about when it snows and you want to melt the ice quickly, you throw salt on there. Granted this is edible salt but still it gets in there to break up the freezing process. EUREKA!
Mangood Sorbet
This photo is a wee bit deceiving, it wasn’t THIS wet and shiny. I took it about 15 minutes after I made it so it was glistening like Edward Cullen in the sun. Mangood did hold up though and was creamy after hours in the freezer. Would definitely make this again and would like to try it as a swirl with vanilla bean.
Hami Melon Sorbet R.I.P.
Not only is this my first post in over a month but it’s also not a fun tale. It was my friend Hami’s birthday and since she was the friend who gave me the ice cream machine in the first place I found it appropriate to send her Hami Melon Sorbet.
Hami Melon Mugshot
Hami melons are like a cross between a cantaloupe and a cucumber. It’s flavor is like a faint cantaloupe, it dances a watery/candy tune, but it’s crunchy and fresh like a cucumber. It’s fun and refreshing like a moonwalk at a birthday party.
Hami Melon X-Ray (I see a monster mouth do you?)
Sorbets take such little effort it’s really not worth mentioning, puree + simple syrup = done. Onto the DRAMA: I purchased some dry ice on Sunday afternoon and silly me didn’t read the bag which noted to not store in a home freezer, so when I checked on it on Tuesday evening I discovered my dry ice friend turned into a ghost and disappeared. Literally. There was nothing left in the bag. Fail.
( another picture of the melon because it’s all I got)
Hami Melon Skin
So I got up early one morning and purchased some new dry ice, drove directly to the post office and packaged what I thought was a secure method. I lined the box with some squishy foam thing and wrapped the sorbet in a bag and inserted a card. Then came time to figure out what shipping method to do. The post office had limited options for box sizes so I had to do priority because the express box was for letter sized items, so I found the largest Priority Mail box and packed it like an elf the night before Christmas. Off ya go to the lovely Garden State!
R.I.P
I had the assumption that the dry ice would flash freeze the sorbet for one day and then by the second the ice would have evaporated but the sorbet would remain solid. Not the case. My friend emailed/texted/called and reported some devastating news. It completely melted and the Post Office called my friend’s work and said a Federal Agent had to open the package because it was leaking. The only thing salvaged was the card which was soaked and had bits of the Hami melon sorbet soul on it.
The Ghost of Hami Sorbet
Lessons learned:
- NOT SHIPPING ICE CREAM.
- Post offices have really large plastic bags for little items.
Mintcumber Sorbet
I remember the first time I tried cucumber in water, it was in Palm Springs and I remember thinking why the hell didn’t I think of that? Crisp, subtle, quenching and refreshing…all adjectives that make me grin.
Cucumber Mugshot
I wasn’t sure how the consistency was going to be for this sorbet because cucumbers are kinda like a tomato…gutsy. I removed the seed layer of the cucumbers so I just worked with the straw-like tube of cool. I pureed it and got this mush of cucumber that smelled lovely. I then went to town with our other friend: Mint.
Mint Mugshot
Sliced and diced mint in the chopping robot while a really light simple syrup brewed on the stove. I reduced the simple syrup mixture because I didn’t want it to be the Kanye West of the show..I wanted the cucumber and mint to shine.
Mintcumber Sorbet
I thoroughly enjoyed the taste of this. My only wish is that it wasn’t so scrape-like, wanted the consistency to be a wee bit creamier. Overall though I really enjoyed this and it was really refreshing as my friends and I enjoyed it outside on a warm summer day.
Water vs. Melon Sorbet
Sooooooo I was looking forward to this for quite some time. Watermelon is like the bouncer of summer, you can’t really start the season without checking in with the refreshing fruit first.
Watermelon Mugshot
I was attending a BBQ and wanted to indulge the buffet o’ summer with a nice fruity sorbet. What I thought was going to be an easy experiment ended up not at all what I imagined. I bought a keg of watermelon, it felt and looked like it must have been 10 lbs. I chopped it up for what seemed to be forever and threw the chopped up pieces into the blender. (NOTE: It was room temperature. This will come into play later to my theory.) I blended it for a while because I didn’t want the watermelon texture involved in the affair. I can’t really pinpoint it but it didn’t work. I thought the simple syrup mixture would lighten the mood but no, the flavor was not sweet, not tasty, not flavorful at all. Correction: there was flavor but it came at the end when it hit your mouth and it was like stale plastic. I can’t really describe it but it was not nice in my opinion.
Water vs. Melon Sorbet Cowlick
Back to my theory. The watermelon needed to be chilled BEFORE I started to slice it. The juices needed to settle and get acquainted in this sandbox of fruit. That’s what I’m saying. I only sliced half of the watermelon at the time and left the other half in tact in the refrigerator so when I went to make another batch I noticed that the flavor was 1.3 billion times better and more flavorful. EUREKA!
Watermelon Sorbet Smile
I also threw in some fresh lemon juice which high-fived the watermelon. The texture and consistency was very icy, similar to loose Italian ice. This one is going to take some work and I have some ideas for next time, one is to freeze the chunks of watermelon before blending so it’s like a smoothie. I won’t give up on you watermelon…never!
Watermelon Scoops
Pomegranate with Shaved Chocolate Sorbet
The word “pomegranate” reminds me of some sort of counter top you’d request for your kitchen. Weird I know. This was an interesting request for a co-worker/friend’s birthday. Like Slap Bracelets and B.U.M Equipment sweatshirts, pomegranates are out of season so I was forced to use the futuristic looking POM.
Pom Mugshot
I don’t have a deep history with pomegranates, I don’t think I’ve actually ever had the fruit in its true form, just mixed with other chemicals in drink formation. I took a swig of this and thought I was going to have to walk a yellow brick road to get the taste out of my mouth. Not a fan. I hoped that the simple syrup mixture and chocolate shavings would lighten up the mood of this bitter drink.
The Pomegranate Blob
I was having a staring contest with the pomegranate blob and it won. It held this shape and while the photo might look like it was a gel it wasn’t…it was a liquid drop but maintained it’s position during the photo shoot.
The other main ingredient was chocolate shavings. I had never “shaved” chocolate so I looked up a few videos on techniques and some mentioned using a knife’s edge but the chocolate bar I was using was very thin and I didn’t want to lose any fingers. The other technique is to use a vegetable peeler which is what I ended up using.
Chocolate Shavings Mugshot
I was kinda pleased with the end result, the simple syrup mixture was a nice friend to the POM juice and sweetened up the bitter being. In my opinion it was a bit too sweet in the end. Plus I took MUNI (public transportation) to work which happened to have one of its major meltdowns, therefore it was out of the freezer for over an hour and got really syrupy. So it was all sorts of confused, kind of like Brendan Fraser’s career, it was all over the place with no real good end result. The birthday boy liked it which is what matters but I think I could make it better next time.
Pomegranate with Chocolate Shaved Sorbet
Oh My Darling Clementine Sorbet
If I did a genealogy trace I would find myself related to the citrus family. I devour anything that claims to be “orange flavored”. With that said, I’m extremely particular about oranges…if it’s not juicy, please move along. For this very reason I adore clementines. They are consistently juicy which I attribute to their bite size stature, all the juices are concentrated in a small studio apartment.
Clementine Mugshot
De-robed Clementines
I have a handful of vanilla beans left which I wanted to blend with the clementine crew to make into an Orange Julius doppelganger. I used one vanilla bean and was much better at scraping the sides this go around.
E.T. Phone Vanilla Bean Home
I wish I had a Popsicle mold because this would be great in bar form. The consistency is very creamy which I’m ecstatic about, it’s not icy or “scrap like” at all. It is a wee bit sticky and clung to my ice cream scoop for dear life. My gumshoe skills tell me it has to do with the vanilla beans. I’m beginning to think they have something to do with making things creamy and sticky.
Clementine Vanilla Bean Sorbet
This ranks up there in the top three as personal favorites. The flavor is exactly what I wanted to achieve but the consistency surpasses my expectations to the max. The flavor is like vanilla bean is on one end of the see saw and a bunch of clementines are on the other, and they go back and forth with flavor. NOM up…NOM down. repeat.
Oh My Darling...Oh My Darling..
Shirley Temple Bunny Bites
I wish more accidents went like this one. I was trying to make a completely different ice cream sandwich for a gathering and needless to say my batch was not going to be done in time. I had made Shirley Temple Sorbet a few days prior so I had that chillin’ in the freezer with no plans except to enjoy it myself. Fast forward to when I went to the store and came across these festive bunny face head cookies.
Bunny Cookie Collage
To my pleasant surprise, sorbet is 1.87654 billion times easier to make a sandwich with vs. ice cream. I’m still somewhat struggling on a cohesive sammie making process. I’ve tried various formats, and still run into issues. Nonetheless, I have found that sorbets are a sammie’s knight in shining armor. They mesh wonderfully, and sorbet is incredibly easy to mold in the cookie. In addition to the flexibility, sorbet doesn’t melt nearly as fast as ice cream does, so it was nice to not have to rush. The cookies were on the harder side so upon a chomp, the sorbet would squeeze out the edges. Wasn’t too pumped about that but it comes with the territory, these ready-made cookies have texture restrictions.
This was definitely a moment of accidental bliss 
Shirley Temple Bunny Bites
Bunny Faces
Cantaloupe Craving Sorbet
This was an impromptu experiment as a result of some exciting news at work. A friend/co-worker shared the news of an addition to her family due in October! YAY! My immediate response was “Congratulations! What flavor ice cream do you want?” She mentioned the crisp and relaxing cantaloupe has been one of her cravings. I noticed her eating it last week and didn’t really know it was in season but she shared some and it was tasty.
I wish perfume makers paid more attention to cantaloupes. They smell delightful and fresh, I would even like my laundry detergent in on this smell. The skin of a cantaloupe reminds me of the back my TV stand… highways of information connecting stuff together.
Cantaloupe mugshot
Sorbets are easier to make than a Brittney Spears song. Simple syrup + fruit = done. I cut up pieces of the cantaloupe and dropped it off at the liquid butcher, a.k.a. the blender. The color was phenomenal, a soft orange that was so soothing it was like aloe for your eyes.
Cantaloupe X-Ray
Congratulations Cantaloupes!
Baby & Momma Cantaloupe
Mama Cantaloupe
Shirley Temple Sorbet
“THE drink” in ’91. Or at least it was for me. To this day I still love Shirley Temples. I have grenadine on my shelf next to my Bailey’s as a reminder that “kid drinks” are just as cool as “grown up drinks”. As a refresher, a Shirley Temple is lemon and lime soda mixed with grenadine then garnished with a cherry. There are some variations but this is how I drank it in the 90′s. Lemon and Lime are like the Batman and Robin of citrus fruits. They “POW” – “ZING”- “KICK” your taste buds with their flavor.
Lime Mugshot
Lemon Mugshot
It’s been warmer in these here parts of lovely S.F. and I wanted something refreshing. I have been counting the degrees until it was appropriate to make this sour n’ sour tag team. I found a recipe for Shirley Temple ice cream but I wanted the lemon and lime uncensored so I opted for a sorbet.
I winged it and came up with a process that was easy enough: liquefy/chop lemons and limes, mix with some soda water, then mingle with simple syrup. After negotiating with the cap of grenadine that was protesting to say on the bottle, I finally got to the red sugary liquid and reunited it with the lemon/lime/sugar medley. NOTE: If you own grenadine, do a routine maintenance and make sure the cap isn’t attached to the bottle, it’ll save you many ” mother &^%$ get off!”
The taste is potent. I attribute it to the fact that I didn’t use just the juices from the fruit but the actual fruit itself. I was pleasantly surprised with the consistency. (If you can’t tell by now I’m rather obsessed with consistency and textures). Shirley is smooth like margarine in a tub, not too icicle-y which I was envisioning. The grenadine comes through at the very end like the encore to the whole refreshing show. Next time I think I’ll throw in a little mint to distract a little from the lemon/lime romance. Thumbs up to the cotton candy color and spring!
Shirley Temple Sorbet
Strawberry Sorbet
Does anyone know the name of those pellets of yellow-ish bits that drape themselves on strawberry shortcake bars? I worked at a beach concession stand in high school, and strawberry shortcake bars were by far my most favorite frozen novelty. In a close second comes the Tweety ice cream bar with the creepy bubble gum eyes.
So I wanted to start off 2010 with a healthier approach. This does not mean I won’t be making full on creamy ice cream any longer, just wanted the first one to be a bit nicer on the stomach line. Strawberries are not in season at all, so I was hesitant to use “fresh strawberries” but I felt obliged to give it a whirl.
Strawberry Gang
Strawberry Mugshot
Sorbets are so healthy compared to ice cream because they have no dairy in it. zilch. Sorbets are just a menage of sugar, water and fruit. Some recipes call for using corn syrup but I just made my own simple syrup, next time I will though to see if there is a taste/consistency difference. I ended up sneaking in my own ingredients to the menage with a teaspoon of peppermint schnapps and cool whip!
Cool Whip Mugshot
Note how the fluffy cloud hangs like an icicle begging to be NOM’ed. I thought the cool whip would add a subtle taste of vanilla which it did and have to say I really enjoyed this one. It will be much more refreshing when strawberries are actually in season and it’s a bit warmer out, but high five strawberry gang, you kids played nice.
Strawberry Sorbet
