Cherry Sorbet

Introduction

We were given a jar of excellent-quality Vignola cherry preserves with Slow Food certification.

It is summer, the weather is hot, and jam is far less tempting than gelato. So let’s try making a sorbet!

The recipe I used works just as well with fresh fruit as it does with preserves. You simply add water to make up for the weight lost when the fresh fruit was cooked down. The recipe was inspired by one in Corvitto’s book ‘Il Gelato senza Segreti’ and partly adapted to the ingredients I had available and my dislike of excessive sweetness.

Unfortunately, this cannot be done with industrial jams or preserves, as they contain many additives that would spoil our gelato.

Ingredients

• Proportions for ~1 kg
• Tested with a Cuisinart ICE100 using a 500 g batch

Balancing

iCalc chart

Method

1. Prepare the ingredients:
   1. Combine all the dry ingredients, excluding the cherries
   2. Add the dry ingredients to the water a little at a time
   3. Blend the cherries
   4. Once the dry ingredients have dissolved, add the cherries and blend the final mixture
2. Aging:
   1. Bring the mixture down to 4 °C as quickly as possible
   2. Leave it to age overnight
3. Churning (Cuisinart ICE100):
   1. Churn for 47 minutes
   2. Extracted at -6 °C
4. Minimum freezer time:
   1. 6 hours, so that it reaches serving temperature

Final notes and conclusions

• Overrun: 30%
• Serving temperature: -15 °C

Tasting test

This gelato is especially light and only mildly sweet. The fructose in the preserves and the dextrose provide fresh notes without making it overly sweet or weighing down the palate. It may, however, taste less sweet than expected if you are used to classic cherry gelato.

The texture is creamy and well developed. Compared with other natural stabilizers, guar gum creates a finer, more elastic texture.

The cherry aroma is fresh and dominant: it does not taste as though it was made from preserves. Nevertheless, because of the process used, it lacks the fragrant notes typical of freshly chopped fruit. Naturally, when cherries are in season, fresh fruit is the better choice!

The preserves have very little acidity, while the lemon juice gave the gelato brightness and a vivid color!