Holy Plummy Deliciousness.

Seriously. If I were to form my own religion, or believe in organized religion at all (too personal?) I'd put this plum sorbet up on an altar and worship it. It's just that good.

Frosty Deliciousness

There's a bit of a stigma about making ice creams and sorbets. It has the reputation of being difficult, time consuming, a pain in the butt.   And it is a bit time consuming.  But not difficult, and not a pain in the butt. This could have taken twice as long and it would have been worth it.   All in all, my amazingly delicious plum sorbet took about 20 minutes to mix, 20 minutes to freeze in the ice cream machine (during which i edited a paper), and another hour in the freezer.  So with only 20ish minutes of active cook time, this is a breeze.

The recipe:

Now the recipe for this isn't precise. It doesn't need to be.  Sugar can be added to taste, certain, boozy ingredients and flavorings can be left out.  Here's what I did. I used Santa Rosa plums because they're relatively local and absolutely good. any good ripe plums can work though.

Mountain of delicious, ripe plums

5 cups ripe santa rosa plums, sliced, no pits. (skins are fine)
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
healthy pinch of salt
1/4 cup grand marnier

First step - Take my mountain of plums and make them pit-free. Now Santa Rosa plums aren't exactly freestone (meaning the pits stick to the fruit) so instead of trying to pit the fruit neatly I cut it away from the pits as closely as possible, and just ate the little bit of "wasted" fruit off the pit. SO not a waste.

Next, throw it all in the work bowl of the food processor, or in a blender. and BUZZZZZZ. you have a nice plum puree. It's pretty liquidy.  Puree the plums until they're a pretty consistently smooth.  There will be some slight texture going on where the skins are. we'll take care of this later.

Next, add the sugar, liquor, lemon juice, salt and extract.  Now if the mixture is sweet,  you don't need to add as much sugar.  Just add half, taste, and keep adding. 

If you don't like almond extract, you can use vanilla.  If you don't like grand marnier, you can use any other hard liquor. You do absolutely need the liquor in the recipe. It's low freezing point keeps the sorbet from turning into ice.  But vodka is flavorless and kirsch works well.  Experiment! You may come up with some magic flavor combo.  Once everything is added, puree some more.

Once everything is pureed and tasting right, time to strain. If you like the skins in the mixture, you can skip this step. but i like a pretty smooth sorbet so I strain.  I put a little bit of the skin back in at the end, just to add some visual texture to the sorbet, but just a little. I strain everything first. I'm kinda controlling when I cook.

Here's what my strainer looked like once it was almost done straining.  I honestly mixed the plum skin mixture with a little more of my leftover, store bought yogurt.  It was delicious. You can keep it to use on sandwiches in place of cranberry sauce too. Or just trash it if you don't like the texture. up to you.

Once the mixture is strained, and whatever bits of skin are added back in, chill the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour, ideally more.  Especially in little home ice cream machines, the colder the mixture is to start, the creamier the ice cream ends up after churning. I like creamy sorbet.

 Here's my ice cream machine. It's a good little Cuisinart counter top model with the core that I freeze separately.  I pretty much always keep the core in the freezer.  That way, whenever the spirit moves me, I can make sorbet, ice cream, or granita, and not have to wait for the core to freeze.

It took about 20-30 minutes for the sorbet to get to the consistency of soft serve. No matter what I make, it's not going to get much harder than that. That's what time in the freezer does.  In the picture to the right, It's almost there.  Every 5 or 10 minutes I scraped the sides of the maker with the spatula. Otherwise, it seems to freeze to the sides. This isn't necessary. I just do it.  I feel like it makes the consistency smoother, scraping the super frozen bits off the edge. So I do it.

Next, put the freshly-churned sorbet into a freezer- safe container, and put that container in the freezer for at least an hour. This is going to be the most difficult part, much like waiting for bread to cool.    I promise, it'll be entirely worth it.  This is the most incredible, plummy sorbet in the world, like biting into a fresh picked plum. Only ay more refreshing.

 Next, scoop yourself a nice, big bowl of this fresh, plum sorbet. Given my dietary restrictions, I had a small bowl.  This is maybe a 3 oz ramekin, if that.  Still, what it lacked in size, it totally made up for in flavor. 

It really was good to the last drop. And believe me, I got each and every drop out of the bowl.