Homemade ice cream has to be one of the most enjoyable do-it-yourself foods out there. I still haven’t mastered the art of it – the texture invariably comes out just a little bit off compared to the professional and all-too-often overly processed cartons you would buy at your local market – but I have such a good time making it that the end result is no less pleasurable. My kahlua ice cream was too icy and didn’t freeze very well; the vanilla was good, but from a mix so ultimately not any kind of go-to recipe; the strawberry ban-oreo frozen yogurt rocked my world but was just a little bit too intensely thick to please the average palate; and then, there’s this sorbet.
White chocolate sorbet, relaxed with a few tablespoons of Godiva white chocolate liqueur and swirled with a syrup made from blueberries heated into a bubbling, thick pot of purple indulgence. The white chocolate is powerful but not overpowering, and the blueberries add the perfect amount of sweetness and color. This sorbet went down just as easily on its own as it did perched atop a slice of that chocolate quinoa cake I just got finished telling you about earlier in the week. And did I mention that it only calls for 1 tablespoon of added sugar, or that the fact that it’s a sorbet allows you to get away with whole milk instead of heavy cream?
Still, it wasn’t perfect. I added too much of the blueberry swirl, so rather than a clean differentiation between stark white and deep blue-purple, I wound up with more of a mélange. The blueberries that hadn’t burst into juice froze a little too blatantly, and the syrup itself became just a hint too icy upon being chilled. So, I’m still learning how to perfect this technique, but am so excited by all of the possibilities and things I learn with each new attempt that I can’t help but smile when I think of the last little bit of this sorbet sitting at home in my freezer. I know exactly why people who learn how to make their own ice cream never want store-bought again. Sure, it tastes fantastic – Haagen Dazs knows their stuff – but there’s a sense of satisfaction and giddiness that’s inherent in homemade that you can’t pull out of the freezer section of your favorite grocery store.
If you haven’t tried making your own, I really think you should give it a go. I’m happy with my Cuisinart machine, but David Lebovitz (who originally blogged about the white chocolate sorbet I used for the base of this recipe) has some really nice tips for making ice cream without a machine. So don’t feel like you need to spend $80 on a contraption, especially if you want to test out the waters before committing to house one more gadget in your pantry. There’s really no excuse; in fact, with blueberry season coming to a close, there’s only more incentive to get on out there and try this before it’s too late!
One Year Ago Today: Margarita Cupcakes
White Chocolate Sorbet with Blueberry Swirl, adapted from David Lebovitz
Yield: 1 quart
The Ingredients
1 ½ cups whole milk
2/3 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
8 ounces high-quality white chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons white chocolate liqueur
1 cup blueberries, thawed if frozen
The Method
Place the blueberries in a small-medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and cook the blueberries down, crushing the whole berries as you go, until thickened and mostly reduced to a juice rather than actual berries, approximately 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely.
In another medium sauce pan, warm the milk, water, sugar, and vanilla bean paste until it almost boils, then remove from the heat and whisk in the white chocolate until it has melted completely. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl that has been nestled into a larger bowl of ice. Stir the mixture until it has cooled completely, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the machine’s instructions.
After the sorbet has reached the desired consistency, spread a few tablespoons of the blueberry syrup over the bottom of a freezer-safe container and top with roughly 1/3 of the sorbet. Add another 1/3 – ½ of the syrup, top with the sorbet, and repeat until all of the sorbet is in the container.
And that brings us officially to the end of my birthday feast recipes! (Do you think I could have drawn it out any longer?) Now it’s time to turn my attention to L’s birthday, which is just around the corner!
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