ice cream Sunday (on Tuesday)…fresh lime sorbet

”You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.” ~ Julia Child

We have had several very warm summer days, and I love having something refreshing to cool off my palate after a meal, or just as a snack. My favorite is lime sorbet with the fine zest of the lime.


Of all the lime sorbet recipes that I have read in the past few weeks, all seem to call for a great deal of sugar. The one that my friend made last summer called for 6 cups of white sugar and the sorbet was so overly sweet that the fresh lime taste was a mere after-thought.

I experimented for the last few weeks and came up with a fresh lime sorbet recipe that used less white sugar, but was still sweet with a fresh lime taste.

ingredients

½ cup Sugar

¼ cup Agave Nectar

1 ½ cups water

1 cup freshly squeeze Lime Juice

1 tbsp Lime Zest

pinch Kosher Salt

¼ cup of a sweet, fruity white wine
(I used a sweet German wine, Dr. Beckermann Rheinhessen Aulese 2008. It is a blend of several German white wines that is fragrantly fruity with an apricot-pineapple aroma.)


directions

Make a simple sugar combining the water and sugar into a saucepan. Place on medium heat stir until the mix starts to bubble slightly. Lower the heat and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved into the water. (The mixture will become clear when all the sugar is dissolved.)

Add the Agave Nectar a little at a time and taste.
You can add more later, when the mixture is in the ice cream machine.
Add half of the lime zest, a pinch of salt and the wine and stir to combine.
Then add the limejuice through a fine mesh strainer to remove the citrus pulp.
Stir to combine and heat mixture through.

Pour into a covered container and cool this mixture for at least one hour in the refrigerator, but overnight is better.
Pour the chilled mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the directions for your particular model. For my Cuisinart ICE-20, I let it mix for 25-30 minutes.

I have been experimenting with this sorbet throughout the summer balancing just enough wine so the alcohol that makes the sorbet smooth and with the proportion of the white sugar that also does not freeze and the liquid sweetener that does.

I wanted the resulting product to be fresh and full of lime flavor, tangy but not overly tart, sweet, but with some depth of flavor after it becomes totally frozen.
I found that this particular wine added the another level of fruity sweetness to the this sorbet which was very refreshing.

This sorbet makes a perfect palate-cleanser between courses all year round and of course a cool, fresh summer desert. I served mine with fresh quartered apricots from the Farmer’s Market and it disappeared in a heartbeat.
Now I am off to make another batch...!