This recipe was given to me by a high school classmate with whom I recently got in touch with at our 20 year reunion. After he found out I had a food blog, he mentioned a family recipe for cranberry frappe that he would share if I was interested. He said they usually serve this instead of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. I’ve never cooked with cranberries before and I had been looking for other interesting sorbet flavors to make, so this cranberry frappe recipe really interested me. At the time it was August, so I knew I would have to wait a few months before fresh cranberries would be readily available at the store. A little over a month ago I was finally able to spot fresh cranberries at my local supermarket.

The texture of this sorbet is incredibly smooth and reminded me a lot of the raspberry sorbet I make. A frappe has more of a slushy texture, so I renamed this recipe as a sorbet since that is how I was going to serve it. If you wanted to make this into a frappe, you could under-freeze it or partially thaw and blend the mixture. I also added limoncello to this recipe to help keep the finished sorbet soft. I did want a little orange flavoring to balance out sharpness of the cranberries, so I added some orange zest to the cooked cranberries. Although the orange zest is only with the cooked cranberries for a few minutes in the blender before being caught in the chinois, the orange flavor is still perceptible. I’ll be making this recipe again for Thanksgiving and plan to substitute Grand Marnier for the limoncello.

Even if you aren’t a huge cranberry fan, this recipe will surprise you—it’s pretty good. After making this recipe I definitely think cranberries are underrated. I’m eager to try pairing them with other fruits for new sorbets.

Ingredients for making Cranberry Sorbet.

Rinse 4 cups fresh cranberries and remove any stems or oddly colored or shaped cranberries.

Boil cranberries in 2 cups of water for 8 minutes. Cranberries can pop when cooked, so cover slightly to reduce splattering.

Add 2 cups of sugar and zest from one orange to the cooked cranberries (do not drain) and purée.

Use a chinois or sieve to separate the skins from the cranberry purée.

Place hot purée in ice bath and begin to chill. Once mixture is no longer hot, add juice from 2 lemons.

Add 1/4 cup of limoncello and continue to chill mixture until it is less than 45° F.

Pour chilled sorbet base into ice cream maker and freeze according to your maker’s instructions.

Transfer finished sorbet to dedicated container and let ripen in freezer for several hours.

The recipe pictured above, with detailed instructions and complete photo gallery can be found on the Cranberry Sorbet recipe page.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Sorbets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.