Raspberry Sorbet

Holy Cow! This was amazing!! I know that by telling you how much I absolutely loved this, that I'll be setting your expectations super high; but I think that this recipe will totally live up to it's expectations. It was so delicious!!

Forget that Lemon Sorbet recipe I gave you a while ago. It's no good. You are only going to want to make this Raspberry Sorbet every week from now until eternity! Wowza!

I made this in my ice cream maker, but if you don't have one, you could probably make this similarly to the instructions for lemon sorbet.

Makes 5 cups (ten 1/2 cup servings)

• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups sugar

Prepare a simple syrup with the water and sugar by combining both in a saucepan set on medium low heat. Cook until sugar is fully dissolved.

• pinch of salt
• 4 cups frozen raspberries, thawed

Add the raspberries and salt. 

Blend until smooth. Strain the mixture (half at a time) through a fine mesh strainer to remove the seeds. Use a spatula to help. Cover and refrigerate 2-3 hours (or overnight).

 

Pour into ice cream maker and let mix until thickened. (about 15-20 minutes). Serve!

Brownie Volcano!

The other day to celebrate summer ending, we headed to the Rainforest Café. During dinner we discussed their dessert – the Volcano. It looks something like this.

 

It was $15. With tax and tip, we’d be up to almost $20 for dessert. So, we decided to make one at home. Ourselves. Here’s how ours looked. Yup. We even put a sparkler on top. Or two.

Here’s how I made it.

Ingredients:

• Box of Brownie mix
• Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
• Hershey’s Chocolate Sauce
• Sparkler. Or Two.

This is pretty self-explanatory, but here it goes. I made the brownies in an 8x8 pan. I let them cool and then sliced them in half. I put the two pieces on a plate in the freezer for about half an hour. or until they were a little firm. Then I took the 4x8 piece of brownie, set it on it’s side and cut in into 2 wedges by slicing lengthwise. I repeated this with the other side. Now, I have 4 brownie wedges. I put these back in the freezer for an hour until they were firm enough to work with.

When the brownie wedges were firm enough, I got out a plate and piled up 3 scoops of ice cream. One on top of the other.  Then I leaned three of the pieces against the ice cream, building the sides of the volcano. I put the thickest part down on the plate as the base. One more scoop of ice cream topped it off. Then I poured Hershey’s Syrup all over it and stuck in my Sparkler. We were ready to rock n’ roll!

Pass out spoons and enjoy!

I know the brownie cutting is hard to understand. Let me know if you have any questions.

Lemon Sorbet

This year instead of cake, Jayna wanted Lemon Sorbet for her birthday dessert. And who could blame her? This tastes like a refreshing, frozen lemonade. It takes a few hours to freeze, but only a few minutes to whip up nice and creamy. With only 3 ingredients, you probably have everything to make this right now.

3 cups sugar

5 cups boiling water
2 cups lemon juice

Combine sugar and water, stirring until sugar dissolves. Stir in lemon juice. Pour into a shallow pan (I use a 9x13) and freeze overnight. {Since there's alot of sugar, it won't freeze completely hard.} When frozen put chunks into a food processor or blender and blend until fluffy. You can serve it now, or refreeze. Makes about 8 cups.

UPDATE: We have started using our ice cream maker to make this in, and it has turned out better than ever!