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.