With the recent heat waves here in the UK (yes, that’s a thing), I’ve started to crave fresh fruit more than ever. Especially chilled, fresh fruit caught my crave. I decided to go a step further and turn a large batch of blackberries that I got from a friend into a delicious frozen dessert. One of my go to summer desserts is sorbet and this blackberry sorbet uses home grown berries to create a deep and rich flavour. It uses a hint of agave syrup to balance out the acidity of the berries and oranges, but if you have less of a sweet tooth than me you can leave it out.
Making sorbet is very straight forward and something you can do in advance. It appears more extravagant than any cake and is far more refreshing in hot weather. I pride myself in using as few ingredients as possible and this blackberry sorbet only has three. It is important to let the ingredients speak for themselves and that is exactly what this recipe does. It has nothing but berries, the juice of blood oranges and agave. The latter is optional. The blood orange juice adds a needed amount of liquid and sweetness. You can replace it with any type of fruit juice that you prefer but I would recommend that you use blood oranges, they taste sweet and add an interesting flavour of berries and citrus. If you never tried blood oranges then you should definitely give them a chance.
There are many ways to liquefy the berries. You can juice the berries, heat them or blend them up. I prefer keeping them raw so I tend to blend them up and strain them through a sieve to remove the seeds. Even if you use the most expensive high speed blenders I would recommend to strain the fruit puree. Blackberries have a lot of very tiny and hard seeds that will make your sorbet gritty if not filtered out. You can filter them out with a sieve or cheesecloth.
While I highly recommend you to use an ice cream machine for this to create a very smooth and scoop-able sorbet you can also pour the fruit puree in a freezer friendly dish and place it as it is in the freezer. Set a timer and give it a good stir – every 30 minutes until it is frozen. It is a bit more tedious that way, but it gives similar results for those who do not have an ice cream maker. Serve your blackberry sorbet with some fresh berries on top and enjoy it outside in the sunshine if you can.
- 600g (5 cups) blackberries
- 250 ml (1 cup) blood orange juice, about 3 blood oranges when freshly made
- 2 tbsp agave syrup (optional)
- Wash and blend the blackberries and process them in a blender.
- Strain the fruit puree through a mesh sieve or cheesecloth and discard the seeds.
- Add agave syrup to the fruit puree and pour the blood orange juice into it. Give it a stir and process in a ice cream maker.
- Transfer into a freezer friendly dish and freeze for another 1-3 hours before serving of you want a scoopable sorbet.
The blood orange juice adds a needed amount of liquid and sweetness. You can replace it with any type of fruit juice that you prefer.
I have to try this with the ripe seedless blackberries from my garden!
Good idea Jonathan, let me know how it went! Love, G.
Tried this yesterday, wonderful but had to use normal orange juice.