Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Our First Attempt: Watermelon Sorbet


Since it's summer, we wanted to start with something cool and refreshing. Also, we wanted to begin with something relatively simple--after all, we didn't want our biggest challenge to be our first recipe.


 Our first step was to puree the watermelon. 
As you can see from Rachel's face, she's never pureed watermelon before. ;)
While, obviously, Ellie is a blender-pro!

 The recipe called for a boiled "simple syrup," however the syrup did not turn out to be so simple. The ingredients were simple (all two of them); however, when the syrup didn't thicken, we began to worry.

 When you're unsure about something, just ignore it for a while: that's Ellie's motto! So we moved on to juicing the lemons. Once again, Rachel was a bit of a novice lemon juicer, while Ellie was OBVIOUSLY a lemon juicer pro.




 We decided to add our watery syrup to the other ingredients and hope for the best.
 The sorbets were then placed in the freezer with clear warnings to Ellie's brothers:
"CAUTION! Do not tip! Liquid inside!"
"CAUTION!! (Same reason)"

 You know the saying, "A good cook never does the dishes"? Yeah..well..either we are bad cooks or that is completely UNTRUE! Dishes must be done! After all, who can keep cooking with a bunch of dirty dishes cluttering the kitchen?

Finally...after freezing for roughly 36 hours, the sorbet was ready to be tasted!
The end product!


The Reviews:

"Light, cool, and refreshing." -Mrs. Harder (Ellie's Mom)

"Good consistency." -Gabe (Ellie's Brother)

Davis-- enough said. 

Rachel's Recipe Review: The Watermelon Sorbet was a good first recipe to try. After tasting it, I thought it needed something more, so we ended up adding a few different things to the different batches (mint leaves to one...gingerale to another). In the end, I found I liked the original recipe the best (the one with extra mint reminded me of slushy mouthwash....yuck). All in all, the Watermelon Sorbet was a nice summer treat, but next time, I'd probably try a different recipe. (Ellie, I know our review will completely contradict one another, but hey...I'm just speakin' the truth.)

Ellie's Recipe Ramblings: I agree that this was a very good first recipe to try; it was relatively simple (well..except that syrup got a little interesting...) and not too hard to screw up--you just have to mix a few things together, freeze it, then whip it up in the food processor--can't be too difficult, right? However, sometimes more work can pay off in more yum, and this recipe kind of taught us that. I do think it a had a pretty good flavor--it was really unique, light, and refreshing. Rachel kept insisting it needed "something more" though, and that led us down an interesting road...First we whipped in a couple mint leaves. I actually thought it was pretty good, however it was called "nasty" and "like a stick of Wrigley's gum" by the panel of judges (a.k.a. my family), and after a while, I kind of started to agree. Then we tried ginger ale, but that was just weird...enough said. So, all in all, it was a pretty good recipe--not great, but not awful either. I would maybe make it again...sometime..in the pretty distant future...


So try-one was okay...now on to Fudge Truffle Cheesecake tomorrow!

"Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie."  ~Jim Davis

2 comments:

  1. I think this is excellent.. Keep it up you two and don't forget to feed your good friend Hope :D

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  2. I love the color of the sorbet....and watermelon is always a favorite! Thanks for sharing.
    P.S. Is creme brulee on the list? :)

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