Over the past few weeks we have been on an ice cream making spree. It started with Double Chocolate Ice Cream and progressed to Strawberry Sorbet, Pineapple and Fresh Ginger Sorbet and Blueberries and Cream Ice Cream. Last night (4th of July), we finished the evening mixing Lemon Wild Tea Vodka Sorbet, which was amazing and we created a new Lemon Mar-tea-ni...get it?
Please bear with us as we are going to post some quick and easy ice cream and sorbet recipes which are created with fresh ingredients and an electric ice cream maker. Let's start with the recipes. We have two wonderful ice cream cookbooks which we have been using as guides for our icy creations. The first is Ice Cream by Shona Crawford Poole. This has easy recipes for both sorbets and ice creams. We love the creative combinations of ingredients which are used to enhance the fruit flavors. For example - Pineapple and Fresh Ginger Sorbet - cool pineapple with a ginger bite and the Lemon Vodka Sorbet which we "kicked up a notch" using Wildberry Tea Vodka. The second book is Williams-Sonoma Ice Cream. This book had the Double Chocolate Ice Cream and Blueberries and Cream Ice Cream recipes. If you are going to start making homemade ice cream, consider investing in a few good cookbooks. They give you great ideas for ice cream and sorbet combinations.
The Fresh Strawberry Sorbet recipe was adapted from the Ice Cream Cookbook by Shona Crawford Poole.
Ingredients:
1 pound of fresh strawberries
Freshly squeezed juice of one orange, we also added the rind of half the orange
1 cup of white sugar
Preparation:
1. Hull the strawberries and puree them with a hand blender or food processor.
2. Strain the mixer through a sieve.
3. Add the orange juice, rind and sugar to the strained mix. Place the mixture in the refrigerator allowing the flavors to develop for about an hour or two.
4. Place the strawberry mixture in the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions.
5. Put in a container and place in the freezer to allow the mixture to firm completely.
This strawberry sorbet was amazing. It is very light and refreshing. It tastes like cool fresh strawberries. One night after the sorbet was made, my son, Stephen, was looking for the freshly chopped strawberries to make a strawberry shortcake. When he couldn't find the mixture, he grabbed the shortbread, added the sorbet and topped it with fresh whipped cream. He thought it tasted better than the real strawberry shortcake.
Our family is fortunate, they get to try so many different combinations of food. Someday we may find that strawberry shortcake actually tastes better with strawberry sorbet.
