"sorbet" news and stories

Fruit + water + sugar = sorbet. It's simple to make, it's nonfat (unless you use a recipe that contains milk) and it's almost Labor Day already. What are you waiting for? Blogger norwichnuts makes a watermelon-and-lime sorbet, above, that's refreshing and ubercool. Melon and citrus are a great team, reprised in this sorbet recipe from Kitchen Daily that invites you to choose from watermelon, cantaloupe or honeydew to mix it up with orange juice.

Using an ice-cream maker is the key to sorbet, as the action of the blades helps to keep ice crystals from becoming too large. No big chunks of ice; just smooth, frosty, fruity goodness.

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Blood-red on the inside, dusty white on the outside, the Elephant Heart plum is a variety you may want to get to know. With a flavor like berries and a meaty texture, this is a plum that begs you to eat it unadulterated but, as blogger dessertfirst did in this recipe (adapted from Emily Luchetti's A Passion for Ice Cream), layering it beneath a fluffy, sweet cornmeal cake gives it panache. Top that cake with a ruby-red plum sorbet, and those Elephant Hearts become unforgettable.

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A rose is a rose, even when it's part of an intensely flavored sorbet with fresh strawberries. This time, it's in a syrup made from rose water, plain water and sugar that blogger Dayna McIssac incorporated into her frosty, fruity dessert. This Epicurious recipe for rose water syrup will help get you started.

Middle Eastern desserts are often flavored with the sweetly floral rose water. You can make your own, which involves simmering rose petals in a covered pot on the stove (I leave this to other, more industrious souls), or you can buy it premade (find a source here). Rose water is also featured in this Persian ice cream recipe from a fellow Slashfood contributors.

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Tropical flavors play a big part in pastry chef Tiffany Macisaac's repertoire (she's a native of Hawaii), and she shared her recipe for this coconut curry sorbet with blogger UlteriorPicture back when she was cooking at Manhattan restaurant Cru. The refreshing coconut-milk and cardamom-inflected sorbet would be as at home in the southern India state of Kerala as it is at Washington, D.C., restaurant Birch & Barley, which Macisaac now owns with her husband, executive chef Kyle Bailey. When she's not whipping up wild sorbets, we hear Macisaac also makes a killer Meyer lemon meringue pie.

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Fresh lemon sorbet looks and tastes totally gourmet, but it's actually one of the easiest things to make.