Strawberry Lemonade Sorbet

During our heat wave here in the Northwest, we were all thinking of anything at all to feel cooler - and for me that means ice cream and sorbet!  It's strawberry season all summer long here.  It starts off with the absolutely best strawberries in the world - Hoods.  If you haven't been in the NW or grown them yourself, you've most likely never tasted them because they don't ship or keep well at all.  They start in June for a short few weeks.

But there are plenty of other delicious varieties!  Right now my favorite fruit stand (about 1 mile west of where Hwy. 26 goes down to two lanes on the way to the coast) has Albions - delicious and available usually all summer.  I bought a flat to freeze, eat, and cook with .... and they were gone in a flash!  Not before I saved enough for Strawberry Lemonade Sorbet, though - it combines two of my favorite summer treats, lemonade and strawberries!  Edit:  this is not a recipe for those strictly limiting their histamines.  See the comments below for more explanation.

Strawberry Lemonade Sorbet

1 cup strawberries (about - a little more never hurts!)
1 cup organic cane sugar
1 cup water
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1T homemade vanilla

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves.  When cooled, add in the lemon juice.  Put the strawberries in a blender and puree, add the lemon-sugar-water mixture and vanilla and blend until smooth.  Process in an ice cream/sorbet maker and then let sit in the freezer for a few hours to finish firming up - if you can wait that long to eat it!

Plum Sorbet and Raw Cherry Sorbet

Summer and time for fruit sorbets!  In the photo, the cherry is the scoop on top and the plum is on the bottom - yeah, they look pretty much alike!!

Plum Sorbet

2 pounds plums - any type, in the photo I used Italian prune plums
1 cup organic sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon homemade vanilla

Pit plums, roughly chop, and put into a large saucepan.  Add sugar and lemon juice and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring.  Let mixture cool a little and then puree in a blender.  Add vanilla and refrigerate until cold.  Freeze in an ice-cream maker.


Raw Cherry Sorbet

4 cups pitted cherries
1/2 cup organic sugar
1T homemade vanilla

Puree everything in a blender and refrigerate until cold.  Freeze in an ice-cream maker.

Coconut Milk Ice Cream

When this comes right out of the ice cream maker, it tastes a lot like I remember Dairy Queen soft serve tasting when I was growing up!  This is a good, basic vanilla ice cream flavor.  My taste testers either couldn't tell it'd been made from coconut milk or thought they could detect a slight pleasant coconut taste.

Coconut Milk Ice Cream

3 cans Trader Joe's Lite Coconut Milk (only ingredients are coconut milk and water)
2/3 cup organic sugar
1 Tablespoon homemade vanilla

Pour the coconut milk into a saucepan and add the sugar.  Bring to a simmer and keep simmering, stirring occasionally, for 1/2 hour.  Cool to room temp and then add the vanilla.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Process in ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.

Variations:
Use organic dark brown sugar for a caramel flavor.

For peppermint, add 1 cup dried peppermint leaves to coconut milk and sugar.  Simmer  1/2 hour, strain out leaves, cool, add vanilla.

For ginger, add 2 T thinly sliced ginger to the coconut milk and sugar.  Simmer 1/2 hour, remove the ginger pieces, cool and add vanilla.  For a spicier ginger flavor, use 1 T grated ginger and leave it in.

Mango Sorbet

One of the best kitchen appliances I ever bought was our ice cream maker!  It's a Cuisinart I got through Amazon and we use it so much I had to order a second freezing tub.  The freezing tub takes more time than they say to get cold enough to make good ice cream - I count on letting it sit in the freezer for two days before I even try.

I buy my frozen mangoes at Trader Joe's.  If you don't have one around, you could use fresh or any frozen that is only mango.  Some brands use citric acid as a wash when freezing - usually made from corn these days, not citrus.  Go figure!

Mango Sorbet

1 1/2 pound bag frozen mango pieces
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup organic sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice

1.  Dissolve sugar in water in a medium sized sauce pan.  Add the mango, cover, and bring to a boil.  Turn down heat so the mango is simmering and cook for about 5 minutes.  Let cool.

2.  Puree with the lemon juice in a blender.  Put in the refrigerator until really cold - at least half a day.

3.  Process according to your ice cream maker's instructions.  Put in the freezer for a few hours to harden a bit more.