Golden Raspberry and White Peach Sorbet
A couple weeks ago we had a wonderful cranberry peach cobbler at a local restaurant. I noticed that it also had raspberries and seemed to have more raspberries than cranberries. The peaches and raspberries were a pretty good combination. Last week I was checking out the berries at my local supermarket when I noticed some odd looking raspberries. The package said they were golden raspberries, which I don’t really recall seeing before. I smelled the raspberries and they smelled great, so I bought a few packages thinking I would make a sorbet. The peaches were just around the corner and the best looking ones they had happened to be white peaches. An idea was born and I went home to tinker with a recipe.
This recipe is a hybrid of the raspberry sorbet and peach sorbet recipes on the site. I decided to go 50/50 on the peaches and raspberries, not sure I wanted either to dominate. Sorbets are a treat to make since few require any cooking. Unlike the peach sorbet recipe, which doesn’t even require straining, the presence of raspberries compels me to pull out my chinois. I don’t mind berry seed in jams or preserves, but I like my sorbets to be smooth. I rounded out the recipe with the juice of one orange and some grand marnier.
Don’t judge a book by its cover
Once I placed all the ingredients in the blender and watched the fruit purée, I thought the mixture looked a little like mashed bananas or applesauce—yet the smell was unmistakably peach and raspberry. I knew then that this was going to be a really interesting recipe since it just didn’t give you any visual cues about the flavor. The mellowness of the peaches is perfectly balanced with the zing of the raspberries while the subtle orange and grand marnier flavors help give a little more depth. Without any vivid color that ordinarily accompanies most sorbets, I find that I have to think about each individual fruit in order to isolate them on the palate. Without the color red, you just don’t expect it to taste like raspberries. I’m almost tempted to put just a little banana in there, but then that really would be predictable, and that’s what is so fun about this sorbet: you just don’t know what you are getting.
Ingredients for making Golden Raspberry and White Peach Sorbet.
Gently rinse and towel dry 2 cups of golden raspberries.
Juice one orange into blender with raspberries.
Peel and pit enough peaches to yield 2 cups of peaches. Add peaches and 1 1/4 cups of sugar to blender.
Purée peaches, sugar, juice and raspberries until smooth.
Pass purée through a sieve or chinois to remove raspberry seeds.
Add 1/4 cup of Grand Marnier to purée and chill in an ice bath until temperature is less than 45° F.
Pour mixture into ice cream maker and chill according to your maker’s instructions.
Let churn until thick before transferring to a dedicated, odor-free container to ripen in the freezer for several hours.
The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and exhaustive photo gallery can be found on the Golden Raspberry and White Peach Sorbet recipe page.
