Make Your Own Sorbet in 5 Minutes

So, recently I was told that neither my husband nor I could have dairy.  This was devastating. It's not that I love drinking milk, because I don't. I'm weird about my milk. So is Shannon. Walk with me down memory lane...

We could only drink 2% from Smith's (grocery store) and it had to be Mountain Dairy brand. It also needed to sit in our fridge for at least 24 hours reach the optimum temperature and feel like it was ours.  Forgetting about the pasteurization process was a plus too.



Back to today. I don't really like cereal, or breakfast for that matter...unless it's a Chick-Fil-A Chicken Biscuit...MMMMM...anyway those have buttermilk in them, so no more of that for me either :) The biggest deal with this no dairy thing is how I use it in ingredients, and ice cream. I absolutely adore ice cream! So I am gathering details on how to make the best dairy free chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, and more! I will share the good stuff with you once I have it perfected. I want to do as much research as I can, because dairy free alternatives are much more expensive and I don't want to waste them. Immediately after hearing this no dairy news, I realized how badly I needed (err...wanted) ice cream. I liked sorbet, particularly Haagen Dazs Mango Sorbet. It's so rich and full of flavor!

I also took a class years ago at Luv To Cook Kitchen Kneads on summertime favorites and the instructor made sorbet out of frozen fruit. So... I decided I could make my own with my Cuisinart food processor. I will tell you, that I think it would have been much better to have a 12 cup food processor when I used a full bag of frozen fruit, which makes 3-4 decent sized servings. A blender will not give you the same consistency as the food processor. If you have something with a really tough serrated blade that it what you want to use.

I used a bag of Dole Frozen Mango Chunks from Wal-Mart, and a little Simply Orange Juice

You could add a little extra sugar, but with the mango I don't think it's necessary. If you were to add something tart like raspberries, then I would definitely add sugar. Otherwise it's too bitter. The neat thing about sorbet is it's really just fruit. You could omit the orange juice, but I think it made the process just a tad faster and made it smoother. You DO NOT want to add ice to this. We are not making a smoothie. You want just frozen fruit. If you want your sorbet hard, you could take the extra step to freeze your orange juice in ice cube trays, but realize you are going to make it into tiny little slivers of orange juice ice and it will melt much faster than you think it will. You will want to use between 1/2 c. to 1 c. of orange juice that you will add throughout this short process. I find 3/4 c. has been the best. 1 cup, make is so the edges melt a bit faster on the edges of the serving bowls.

First, pour your frozen fruit in the food processor

Then add a little bit of the orange juice to speed the process up!

Put your hand over the top of the food processor

Then "Pulse" 15 times for about one second each

Wait....Did you forget to keep holding down the top?

So did I...clean it up...put your hand back on the top and continue.

It should look like this from the outside...

And on the inside:

Stir it up a bit to get the bigger chunks back down by the blade and add 1/4 c more orange juice. You can stop adding more here if you want.

Recover the machine and this time press on and leave it for about 30 seconds.

Now is a good time to be throwing away the bag with the frozen fruit in it, putting away the orange juice, grabbing your serving bowls, or maybe cleaning up that mess I told you to do earlier... ;)

Now It should be a lot smoother, remove the cover, and stir it up to make sure the chunks are out. You can add more orange juice (1/4 c.) And press "on" again for another 30 seconds. Repeat this if necessary.

When it's all done, you should be able to slide your spoon/silicone spatula over the top and it should glisten and mold however you want it to :)

I use these Corningware, "Just White" rice bowls. They are the perfect size for sorbet or ice cream....or I guess rice, I just haven't ever used them for rice. Maybe I should...

Factoid: I'm also told sorbet is a good palate cleanser if you are having some sort of taste test in the future :)

Aren't these beautiful?! I couldn't care less about dairy when I'm eating this (Note from Shannon: I appreciate the use of "couldn't care less"  I hate it when people say they could care less.  If you can care less, then you care and that doesn't make any sense in what you are trying to say.  Ok, I'm off the soapbox now)!