Mucho Sorbets!

So at work this weekend, we discovered we were almost out of sorbet – and the place we order from is a Monday through Friday company. Of course, we discovered this lack of sorbet on Friday night, meaning we had half a container of raspberry sorbet to last us the weekend. 

This led me to offering to bring in my ice cream maker to make sorbet in-house. I did so on Saturday. I also brought some leftover watermelon. So, what did I make? 

Watermelon Lime Sorbet of course! And here’s what I used. 

The juice of 6 Limes

3 Cups Watermelon Puree

1 Cup Simple Syrup

Voila! Just freeze until the correct consistency. (it’s the lighter pink)

 

Now, I let that freeze up. It made about 1 quart total. That was Saturday.

Sunday, I made Peach Basil Sorbet.

3 Cups Simply Syrup

4 Cups Peach Puree (white or yellow)

Infuse 1 handful of Basil into the mixture, by heating it all up to a boil, then removing from heat and letting it come to room temp before freezing.

**Bruise the Basil first, by squeezing it in your hand – it makes the herb more aromatic and helps infuse it. 

It’s the sort of orange colored one! 

Sorbets/Sherbets

These are pretty simple to make. They don’t require any cooking off of anything – not to mention they’re healthier than ice cream. The hardest part here is getting your hands on an ice cream machine. Luckily my mother just bought one for the house (not for ME – she made it clear that it will be staying at the house and not traveling with me). But this was still in class, so either way there wasn’t an issue for me.

First of all, you may be asking what the difference between sorbet and sherbet is. 

Sorbet is syrup based with no dairy whatsoever.

Sherbet is basically sorbet with several ounces of cream.

NEITHER of them are dairy based, as ice cream is.

Now that that’s cleared up, here’s a formula for fruit sorbet.

1/2 lemon worth of zest.

1/2 tsp of Egg Whites

8 ounces Fruit Puree

8 ounces Simple Syrup

*To make this into a sherbet add 3 – 4 ounces of heavy cream (depending on how creamy you want it).

There’s no specific order to it, just mix all the ingredients together.

Now you need to check the sugar density of the mixture. Sugar prevents freezing. That means if there is too much sugar in your mixture it won’t freeze properly (it happened to our gelato). 

You can buy a fancy and expensive thing called a refractometer and use that (if you happen to have one you want it to read between 30 and 36 Brix) . You can track down a baume hydrometer. If you happen to have the Baume on hand (I assume its less expensive) you want it to read between 14 and 18 Baume. 

If you don’t have either (like me), use an egg. Yes, an egg. Raw and shelled. Clean the egg off and carefully place it into the sorbet/sherbet mixture. You don’t want it to crack. Make sure your mixture is in a tall container so that the egg won’t hit the bottom if there isn’t enough mixture in the container. You want the exposed part of the egg to be between the size of a dime and a quarter.

If the area exposed is larger than a quarter add more puree/solids. If the exposed portion is less than a dime, add more simple syrup. If you need to add more of either one of this for flavor purposes, feel free as long as it is within the freezing range.

Once you have determined that it will freeze properly, strain it.

Then freeze it in your machine!

In class we made Strawberry Orange Sorbet, Mango Mint Sherbet (infusing the mint into the simple syrup) and Mango Strawberry Sherbet.