cherry buttermilk sherbet

I have been seeing homemade ice creams, sorbets, granitas and sherbets popping up on food blogs all summer long and it's been driving me bonkers! I really, really wanted to make some ice cream but I also didn't want to find all the ice cubes needed for my ancient-but-oh-so-beautiful turqouise ice cream maker. I wondered if it was possible to make ice cream without an ice cream maker? And then I remembered that last year I did make a Seville orange ice cream sans and it turned out just fine indeed.

It's cherry season around here and I had some dark, sweet Bing cherries from the Okanagan just waiting to be used up...perfect for an icy treat. I also had buttermilk in the fridge and figured it would add the perfect amount of creamy tang to this sherbet. From the photo above, I obviously didn't have a cherry pitter*, so I just used a knife to un-pit the cherries. They were going to be blended up so I wasn't looking for intact-looking cherries. I just put on some loud music and got my pitting groove on!

Once you finish pitting, the hard part is over. The ingredients are easy enough to come by and the process is simple. I didn't strain the liquid after blending which would have removed the cherry skin, but I actually liked the added texture of the itty-bitty nubbly bits. If you don't, go ahead and strain the mixture before adding in the sugar. Now, the only thing you have to do is wait it out...and the wait can be a bit of a buzz-kill, especially when it's really, really hot outside.

However, once the wait is over, scoop on in. The resulting sherbet is ripe and bursting with cherry flavour: it's heady and gorgeous in taste and well, just look at the damn thing! It's beautiful and it scoops like a dream. Enjoy this now while cherries are at their peak. I mean it, just do it.

* Uh, little did I know, I did have a cherry pitter. Cornelius brought it to my attention. He inherited it from his grandma and it sat unbeknownst to me in our drawer of strange kitchen things. Next time.

cherry buttermilk sherbet
3 1/3 c cherries
3/4 c sugar
1/3 c pomegranate-cherry juice blend
1 3/4 c buttermilk
2 T bourbon
1 t almond extract
1/4 c lime juice

Pit the cherries and place into a medium-sized saucepan. Add in the juice and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer until cherries are soft, about 20 minutes. Use a hand blender or transfer the hot mixture to a blender and blend well until everything is totally liquefied. Stir in sugar until it has dissolved completely. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

When the cherry mixture has chilled, add buttermilk, bourbon, almond extract and lime juice and stir to combine. If you have an ice cream maker, pour into maker and churn. Otherwise, pour mixture into a large rectangular cake pan and put in the freezer. Whisk the mixture every hour or so until it sets. Transfer to a lidded container and freeze for at least 4 hours.

move over pie: raspberry, black currant & nectarine galette

Baking a pie is a pretty wonderous thing. Somehow there's much more meaning and memories that end up baked into a pie than, let's say, a cupcake. Not that I'm dissing everyone's favorite cupcake. It's just that pies seem to remind us of days gone by, of grandmothers, of pies cooling on kitchen windowsills. They are a bit old-fashioned and antiquated, but the act of baking a pie from scratch shouts out love, plain and simple.

Let's face it. Pies can be fussy and a bit frightening, what with finding the perfect pie dough recipe to flirting with disaster just trying to roll out the damn thing. So that's why I've become enamored with the galette. A galette is what one would call a bit rustic and freeform. It only involves rolling out 1 piece of dough rather than two, since the dough folds over creating it's own top crust. It's brilliant, really. It's beautiful in it's own way and one bite will bring all those old-timey memories flooding back.

This isn't the first time I've made a similar pie. Last year I was very successful rolling out a wonderful cornmeal crust that held the fruit beautifully. It declared it a dream crust. This time, however, I wanted to try something a bit more traditional and stumbled across Molly's crust. It wasn't as easy to work with in that I had to add more water to the dough and it didn't hold it's shape very well. Figuring it was bungled, I just threw all the crumbs, loose bits and doughy bits together, and held it tight with some plastic wrap. After sleeping in the fridge overnight, the dough seemed just fine in the morning. I rolled it out and it surprisingly held together. And how did it bake up? Flaky and light, just like I had dreamed. I may just have a new contender to my dream pie dough recipe!


raspberry, black currant & nectarine galette
For crust (crust recipe modified from Orangette):
5 T ice water, plus more as needed
1 t white vinegar
1 ½ c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T sugar
¾ t kosher salt
9 T cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

2 c raspberries
2 nectarines, sliced
1/4 c black currants
1/2 c sugar
zest of 1 lime
2 T cornstarch
1 egg, lightly beaten

1. In a measuring cup, combine the water and vinegar and store in the fridge until ready to use. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour and salt together. Using a pastry knife, blend in the butter until you are left with a mixture resembling coarse crumbs about the size of peas. Slowly add in the vinegar/water combo and use a wooden spoon to gently blend the mixture so that it holds together lightly. Spread plastic wrap on the counter and dump dough into the middle of the plastic wrap. Seal tightly and press into a disc. Refrigerate for 4 hours or over night.

2. Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, combine together the fruit, sugar, cornstarch and zest. Blend gently. Set aside.

3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until it's fairly thin (about 1/8" thick) and move dough over to a walled cookie sheet. Place berry mixture in the middle of the dough and then fold the dough edges around the fruit, pressing gently around each fold to contain the juices. Brush crust lightly with egg.

4. Bake galette for about 40 minutes until the crust is golden, the fruit turns soft and the juices run bubbly. Let cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.