Cooking: Blood Orange Sorbet (Recipe)

Friends of ours have a great annual tradition in the summer: an ice cream bowl. They invite a bunch of friends to come to a BBQ with a homemade ice cream entry in hand. My husband and I have actually won the competition a few years (here is one of our winners) and last year participated as judges--the real prize!

This summer we were back in the fray. We made two ice creams, a chocolate malted (we added chopped up whoppers), and a "Blood Orange Agave Sorbet." The sorbet was an afterthought but took third place! And, it was so easy, tonight I repeated it and invited our family over for a casual dinner and homemade ice cream.

Using agave syrup may have some health benefits (requires a bit less compared to sugar) but it also means you don't have to heat the mixture to dissolve the sugar crystals--so the whole process is much quicker.

Here's the recipe I developed after some quick research about the proportions.

2 1/2 cups fresh squeezed orange juice (the better the oj, the better the sorbet!)
1 1/2 cup pomegranate juice (such as Pom)
3/4 c. Agave syrup
12 drops food coloring

Mix all the ingredients together and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. You could also put the mixture in the freezer for 30 minutes or so.

Pour into your ice cream maker and follow the maker's instructions for sorbet. We use a Cuisinart and it advises that the consistency of sorbet is a bit slushy, but pre-chilling the mixture helped firm it up a bit, and you can also transfer it to your freezer to harden it further.

If you'd like you can add the fancy garnish I came up with ("presentation" has been part of the competition in the past)--would you guess those mysterious sugared white disks are actually jelly beans I sliced? I just wanted a little something edible and white and round. Jelly beans. I actually love the white ones. The presentation challenge was also a good excuse to use these little Origo cups I bought years ago at Dean&Deluca. Egg cups turned sorbet cups.

Give it a try, or try some other fresh juice--I think lemon is next on our list! So easy!