After reading David Lebovitz’s scoop-endous list of blogs that feature recipes from his book, The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments, I decided I had to order a copy for myself. It arrived in the mail last week and I eagerly flipped through 246 pages of fantastic recipes and photos. The book has great information about equipment and technique in addition to the extensive assortment of recipes that go well beyond frozen treats. These additions include recipes for toffee, candies fruits, ice cream cones and more; all sorts of things you would expect to accompany your ice cream dessert at a nice restaurant. If you don’t have a book on ice creams—or if you already have more than 10—I highly recommend this one. Great job, David!

If you are in the San Francisco bay area and would like to meet David in person, tickets are still available for his class/demo on June 22 at Draeger’s Cooking School. I’ll be there, too, of course. If you reside elsewhere, check out David’s schedule for an appearance near you. I’m looking forward to seeing him make parsley ice cream (recipe also in The Perfect Scoop), since I wouldn’t have the balls to make an ice cream with parsley on my own.

The first recipe I made from David’s book was Blackberry Sorbet (open your books to page 126, please). I love berries and any ice cream that I get to use my chinois is even better. Coaxing the blackberry puree through the chinois was more work than it was with raspberries, which surprised me. Like the raspberry sorbet I make, I ended up with a heaping 1/4 cup of seeds, so don’t skip using a sieve, strainer or chinois. Since this is a no cook recipe and the amount of lemon juice required is small, it actually assembles very quickly.

The finished sorbet recipe has a beautiful, deep red hue and tastes as good as it looks. I added a little Chambord and limoncello to the recipe since I am hooked on alcohol in sorbets. The resulting flavor is deliciously intense so I considered other flavors to pair it with. Realizing that this sorbet was a key ingredient in my current favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s sorbet, Berried Treasure, I decided I would make David’s recipe for lemon sorbet for my next post.

Ingredients for making Blackberry Sorbet.

Purée sugar, water and blackberries in blender.

Pour purée into sieve, strainer or chinois to remove seeds.

Add lemon juice, Chambord and limoncello and transfer to ice batch to chill.

Once sorbet base is colder than 45° F, freeze in ice cream maker per your maker’s instructions.

Transfer frozen sorbet to dedicated container to ripen in freezer for several hours.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery, can be found on the Blackberry Sorbet recipe page.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Sorbets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.