Submitted by: Sara Stopek
Servings: 8 (more as garnish to another dessert)
Ingredients: fresh cranberries – 2 12 oz. packages
juice of 1/2 a lemon
maple syrup (as little as you can get away with)
a biggish splash of OJ (optional)
a smallish splash of Cointreau, Triple Sec, or Grand Marnier
a cinnamon stick
Ice cream maker
Instructions: In a pot, cover the cranberries with water. Start high, then turn down to simmer till they burst – it doesn’t take long.
Mush the cranberries through a chinois, colander or course sieve. (This isn’t essential, but removing most of the skins tiny brown seeds makes the end result more pretty, less gritty.)
Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon, a splash of OJ (fresh is great, unless you don’t have an orange), and a hint of whichever orange liqueur you have on hand, and stir in maple syrup, a very little at a time, till it’s still tart but suddenly thrilling.
Toss in a cinnamon stick, and chill overnight, while your ice-cream maker’s cylinder freezes. You won’t really taste the cinnamon, but it plays very nicely with the other flavors somehow.
Pour the beautiful goo into the ice-cream maker and let it do its thing. If that happens before you’re done with the savory chapters of the meal, scoop out the sorbet and hold in the freezer. Otherwise, you can serve it right out of the ice-cream maker. Crazy-good with dark chocolate. Also good with a baked apple/nut/coconut oil kind of thing…
Notes: I only used enough maple syrup to take the edge off the tartness and tie the other flavors together, and our Neo-eating Thanksgiving guests loved it. YMMV…
This could also be done with raw cranberries, making it even more ridiculously simple.
Join the Discussion