To make a lemon sorbet yourself, for example to use in a Sgroppino or in a Smackerel of Hunny is ridiculously easy. Check out the recipe for a homemade sorbet below.
For most ice cream, you need an ice cream maker. This one doesn’t. Sorbets are made without cream, and rely on the right balance of sugar to lemon juice to prevent them from freezing into one big chunk of frozen juice. This means that if you get the recipe right, you need nothing else but lemon, sugar and water for your homemade sorbet!
- 240 gr sugar
- 180 gr water
- 80 gr lemon juice
- 40 gr lime juice
- zests of one lemon
- zest of one lime
- 2 egg whites
- Blend all ingredients except for egg whites until sugar has dissolved, then strain out zests. Beat egg whites, add to mixture and mix. Place into freezer and break up with a fork every couple of hours.
Homemade Sorbets with other flavours
Unfortunately, because the sugar to acid ratio matters a lot, tinkering with the recipe is not easy. If you substitute fruit juices for the water, you end up with a different sugar content. Because of that, you’ll probably have to do some experimenting if you want to try out different flavours.
At the same time, if you use flavoured sugar (vanilla being an obvious example), you can substitute it for the sugar in the recipe above without any problems.
The recipe above is based on Tony Conigliaro’s wonderful book called Drinks; and if you haven’t picked it up yet, I really recommend you do!
