Lemon/ Lime Sorbet

Lime Mint Sorbet, originally uploaded by Je@b.

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We’ve been jonesin’ for some ice cream for a while now, but our attempt to go greener (or at least greener) has left us with a conundrum: commercially processed ice cream isn’t all that green, or healthy.

So, we found an attachment for our Kitchenaid that allowed us to make ice cream at home. Its really not all that different from the old-school ice cream makers (which I have never used), and is not at all complicated.

So, half of that conundrum is resolved, but that leaves us with whether or not we could make something healthy. It turns out that there are all kinds of frozen treats that aren’t really too unhealthy, relatively speaking. Most of the sorbet-type ice creams really don’t delve too far into heavy cream and cookie dough world, so we settled on that.

Lemons and limes aren’t too expensive at all, and N. really likes the lemon-lime taste. Flavor decided. Type decided. Homemade, of course.

We found this recipe from a Yahoo! Answers comment, and varied it according to our available ingredients and equipment. This recipe is really pretty straightforward, and not expressly intended for our style of ice cream maker, is if you don’t have what we used, this recipe can still be executed.

Here’s how

ngredients
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup lime juice
2 egg whites, beaten lightly
1. Stir 2 cups water with the sugar in a pan over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low, simmer for 5 minutes, then cool.
2. Add the lemon and lime juice to the syrup and pour into a metal tray. Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper and freeze for 2 hours. Transfer the icy mixture to a food processor or bowl and process or beat with electric beaters to a slush, then return to the freezer. Repeat the beating and freezing twice more.
3. Transfer to a bowl or food processor. With the electric beaters or processor motor running, add the egg whites and blend. Return to the freezer container, cover with greaseproof paper and freeze until firm.
4. If you are using an ice cream machine, add the egg white when the sorbet is almost churned and the machine is still running.

Source: The Essential Dessert Cookbook (Murdoch Books)

How we varied it:
- We used a turbinado sugar (pretty much raw cane sugar), so the finished product had a slightly tan hue.
- We used fresh lemon and lime juice, mostly. The recipe calls for a total of 1.5 cups of juice. Well, two small limes make about 1/4 cup, a large lemon about half a cup (at least the fruit we got). So, I augmented the juice total with some “fresh-squeezed” juice from a bottle that we bought for something and never used.

Kitchenaid Ice Cream Maker tips: let the mixture churn for a good 15 minutes, and don’t introduce the egg whites to the mixture until the last 1/3 of the churning process. It should have a pretty smooth consistency, and appear pretty cloudy after the egg whites have been introduced and well churned.