Champagne Mango with Strawberry Sorbet

Hi All. Found something new to share. Another mango treat! It’s creamy, sweet, has a bit of a chewy texture and its cold! Did I mention that it tastes amazing? It’s totally worth the couple minutes to put it together.

I’ve made this a couple times now and find that I like it better with Almond milk rather than the coconut milk that I show in the picture below. Even though you only put in a splash, it still affects the flavor slightly. Either way, it’s still amazing! 1 serving should easily be enough for two people – as long as you’re not making it for dinner.

Oh! There’s one secret ingredient in this recipe. It’s the honey. This jar of honey I picked up at the Saturday market in LA a number of months ago and its mango infused. Basically, it has mango extract in it. The flavor is pretty strong so I don’t use the honey much. But in this case, I think I’ve found the perfect usage for it! It might even be this honey! I have to say that it really brings out the flavor of this desert.

Ingredients:

IMG_9080_ingredients

  • 1 Ripe Champagne mango
  • 2 Medjool dates
  • 6-7 frozen strawberries
  • 2 Tablespoons almond milk (which is better than coconut milk)
  • 1 Tablespoon Kefir (strawberry flavor)
  • 1 spoonful Honey

Place everything but seeds in the blender and quickly grind it soft. If you blend too long, you’ll melt the strawberries too much. You also want to keep the dates just a little junky so that it gives the desert a little texture.

Note: I doubled the batch – which is what you see in the picture.

IMG_9082_preblend

Notice that I’ve got the soft stuff on the bottom.

IMG_9084_blender

I might have blended just a bit too long. It should stand up a little better than this.

IMG_9087_finished

But look at that end result! Yum. You’ll get a little grit form the strawberry seeds, but the date bits totally make up for it.

This is a melt in your mouth treat. Can’t wait to pick up some more mangos!

Raw Cantaloupe Sorbet

What a great way to finish a scorching hot weekend – fresh raw ice cold sorbet! And, seeing that we’re rounding out the last really nice days of the summer, the melons are sweet and plentiful. Thus, tonight, I whipped up some fresh raw cantaloupe sorbet.

If you’re not a big cantaloupe fan, there’s nothing about this sorbet that will make it less … well, … cantaloupe tasting. But, if you are a fan, this will be a summer treat unlike any other sorbet. There’s nothing like light, fluffy, creamy, soft, cold sweet melon to top off the night with a smile.

Oh, before the pictures, I can’t believe how hard it is to find a raw cantaloupe sorbet recipe on the web. I guess people really don’t like this stuff – or – at least the raw folks haven’t really figured this one out yet. I’ll post it and hopefully the world of folks reading here can conspire to enhance this recipe so as to really make this melon flavor pop!

Recipe:

  • ½ ripe cantaloupe melon
  • 1 Mire’s lemon
  • ¼ cup pure raw agave syrup

As you can see, the ingredient list is really simple. Make sure that you don’t use a large melon, but simply a great ripe medium size one. Cut it in half, remove the seeds and proceed to slice the melon into small cubes for you’re going to place it in the freezer for 1 hour. If you space them out well, they will cool faster.

Once lightly frozen, squeeze the juice of the lemon and add the agave syrup to your high powered blender (a cheap blender won’t have the muscle to liquefy this fruit when it’s frozen). Using the tamper, quickly grind the melon chunks into your sorbet. It’s going to be thick, so you’ll have to work hard and fast.

One trick is to quickly get it mixed up and turn the blender off. At this point, there will still be really small chunks, but you can taste it to see if it’s got the right amount of sweetener. If the fruit is really ripe, you’ll want to use less syrup. Once it tastes right, you’ll want to get back to blending; but this time on high so it can be really fluffed up. This shouldn’t take more than about 20 seconds. If you blend too long, you’ll melt it into juice – so be quick!

In the end, you’ll get a great soft-serve that will slowly melt in a room temperature bowl.

I have to admit that this recipe doesn’t knock your socks off, but if you like melon (like I do) you’ll get a great cold melon surprise that will satisfy any late night craving!

Enjoy…

Oh, and like I said above, if you give this one a try and find something to add that would complement the cantaloupe, please feel free to share! Next time I might add a couple strawberries or maybe a spoon full of powdered cacao. I’ll update this posting if (when) I do.

Raw Banana Cacao Sorbet

This one’s a keeper! I can’t believe I haven’t posted this recipe before. It’s been so long since I’ve had too many bananas that I’ve had to freeze them. Thus, it’s been a long time since I’ve had this sorbet.

If you love bananas dipped in chocolate, this recipe is for you.

It’s also really easy.

Recipe:

  • 3 frozen ripe bananas
  • ½ cup coconut milk
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla powder
  • 1 heaping tablespoon cacao powder
  • 1 heaping tablespoon raw honey

Start by pealing and freezing the bananas the day before (or a few days before). I would recommend a zip-lock baggy that you squeeze the air out of. You don’t want them to turn brown (ha! Like you’ll notice with the added cacao.).

When you’re ready to blend, break the frozen bananas into 1 inch lengths (or cut them for they are pretty hard) and then add all ingredients to Vita-mix. It doesn’t take very long to blend and you’ll want to use the tamper to press the banana into the blades.

With three bananas you get 4 to 5 servings – unless you like big servings (which I do).

I highly recommend this one. The only real problem is making sure there are ripe bananas available to use. 

Hope you like it too!

Amazing Peach Sorbet

This recipe is so simple and delicious that anyone should be able to whip it up in just a few minutes. I guarantee that it will take you ten times longer to eat this than what it takes to put it together for the flavor is to delicate that you’ll want to savor every spoonful.

Be prepared, for this will make a meal!

Recipe:

  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 4-5 large medjool dates (pitted)
  • ½ to ¾ tsp vanilla powder
  • ¾ bag of frozen peaches

First thing to notice here is that I prepared last summer! When boxes of peaches came on for ‘cheap’ I bought a bunch and saved them in the freezer. Each quart size bag as the equivalent of eight medium peaches so this recipe calls for about six. Note that the skins and pits have been removed so what comes out of the bag is pure peach ‘meat’.

Add the coconut milk into your 3-horse power blender (I strongly advise that you only use something that really has the muscle to get through this), drop in the dates, about a teaspoon vanilla powder and then about 6 frozen peaches. I use a knife break apart the frozen block of peaches. I make sure each piece I break off is no bigger than about ½ a peach (size wise – large ice cube size).

With all this in the blender you’ll want to start out on about 4 or 5 and use the tamper to press the frozen peach down into the blades. This is pretty hard to do. You’ll almost feel like standing on it in order to force the peaches down. As soon as the mixture starts to grip in, start counting in your head and turn the blender above 7. Quickly work the peaches down with the tamper and make sure to not let it develop an air bubble down at the blades. This hectic grinding process shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds. If so, you’ll end up with a milk shake rather than ice cream.

The little specs that you see in this mixture is the dates. Yum!

This six peach mixture makes two beautifully decadent servings. You’ll want to savor every bite. The little bits of dates come across as little cold sweet carmelly tidbits.

I highly recommend this desert (meal) and I believe you will too.

Let me know what you think if you try it!

Blueberry Coconut Sorbet

Looks like blueberry treats are the in thing for me this week.  Lol.  I wonder if I’ll start turning blue like the bad girl in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? As it turns out, I drank a little too much carrot juice last spring and noticed that my skin started to pick up the color of carrots. I think I’d rather turn blue.

This Blueberry Sorbet is to die for! When I served this to my daughter a couple days ago, her first words where “Oh my God” as the semi-frozen cream melted in her mouth. She couldn’t get over how fresh it tasted. It’s definitely decadent.

I’ve been making this for a while and it freezes great. If you make too much (which I try to always do) you just pour it into a Tupperware container (or Glad or whatever) and place it in the freezer. Make sure you freeze it in single serving sizes because it doesn’t serve up like ice cream.

So here we go. I will assure you that it’s definitely worth your time here.

The Young Thai Coconut water ice cubes make this!

The list of ingredients is really simple:

  • 6 Young Thai Coconut water ice cubes
  • ½ – ¾ cup coconut milk (vanilla flavor)
  • Frozen blueberries
  • Raw Agave

Ok, this one will take a little creative writing for I don’t normally measure how much I use of everything when I whip this up. Thus the next picture may help.

4 cups berries, 3/4 up coconut milk (I think), 6 ice cubes and agave

Looks like I put in about four cups frozen berries. Because they are hard and cold, they will blend down a bit. I think the finished amount was about 3 cups. With the agave, you put in as much as you would like – for me, it’s a squirt about 2 seconds log. I would guess about 2 tablespoons worth.

When blending, start slow and work your way up (speed wise). You’ll definitely have to work this one. The berries will not want to drop into the blades so you’ll have to coax them. I end up turning the blender on and off a number of times as I work this mixture with the Vita-mix supplied plunger.

But the end result is definitely worth it!

Just Amazing!

The real trick with this one is the young Thai Coconut milk (water) that you freeze into ice cubes. The recipe is definitely not the same if you pass on this process. Thus, the next time you make Coconut Cream Pie, save the extra water in ice cube trays knowing that it won’t be long before you’ll be making this amazing sorbet! Also note that the Coconut Cream Pie posting has information about opening coconuts that you might want to review if you haven’t opened them before.

I have to admit that the best part about making this recipe is that it’s really fast. You don’t have to soak anything or thaw anything, you just drop it all in and blend it up.

This frozen blueberry roll that I’ve been on makes me think that I’ve got to get to the store and buy some more fresh fruit! It’s cherry season and I shouldn’t be spending my time with frozen stuff. The fresh stuff only (really) comes around for a short time every year. I’ve got to take advantage of it.

Try this and let me know what you think.