Southern heat is unbearable. Rather sit in the center of an oscillating fan ring while crunching on ice, I set out to make a flavorful frozen dessert. Fruit pops are pretty trendy right now, but I want something more involved than mixing fruit and yogurt. Maybe a childhood favorite. Maybe some sherbet made from an easy recipe at The Spruce Eats.
So what have we got here? One cup of sugar, one cup of water, 2/3 cups of lime juice, one tablespoon lime zest, two cups whole milk, and two optional drops of green food coloring. Easy!… until I decided to make my own lime juice.
According to Google search results, each lime can yield approximately two tablespoons of juice. Such little things, they should be easy to pulverize on a juicer.
I call it Limes in the Morning.
Six little limes were then sliced in half and arranged on the cutting board, awaiting further mutilation by my brand new juicer. This was gonna be fun!
“Fun” in quotation marks, more like. Juicing citrus isn’t as easy as simply mashing the fruit onto the pointed dome. Here the pulp frayed around the rim of the peel, leaving a lot of potential juice hanging like baubles. Creative handy action was required now. If grinding a lime in various angles across the dome can be called creative.
I pressed against the edge of the rind with the heel of my palm… removed the lime and slipped it back on the dome so the hanging pulp was tucked inside the rind… twisted the fruit like a bottle cap that refused to spin off… and scraped the pulp that broke off onto the grating. It felt like I was helping this poor fruit and plastic device engage in awkward, unsatisfying lovemaking.
One down. And, ouch, my wrists. I switched hands throughout the ordeal. Yes, I’m calling it an ordeal. To others, it’s an experience, a lifestyle. When I do research on clean eating, I inevitably run across advice on making juice at home, along with pictures of these smiling, healthy people likely filled with the juices their unmarred hands extracted from free trade, organic, cruelty-free produce. How do they do it? How can they juice and still have time to go to their mixed-martial-arts-yoga-Pilates classes, grow all their own food, and still have photogenic hair? I want to know.
Fifteen minutes later, all the limes were spent, as was the juicer, I’ll bet. I wondered if this was how I’d develop carpal tunnel. Moreover, my shoulders burned. Those suckers better be toned in two days’ time.
Eeugh. I need to stop using that analogy. Now it was time to measure the little green bastards’ blood. As my perpetual bad luck would have it, the juicer’s top wasn’t screwed on right. Juice spilled out as I poured it into the measuring cup. Dammit! I’d have to juice another…
I’ll be damned. Right on the dot, almost.
Part two of the sherbet making adventure was merciful. One cup of sugar and one cup of water boiling happily until they joined as syrup. Next up, the lime zeeeehhhh… crap. I knew I shouldn’t have thrown away those spent limes.
A few still remained in the bag, so I sacrificed two for the zest and some lime-infused water. I needed to drink some water anyway.
One of the gadgets I’ll need in my growing population of kitchenware is a fine-tooth grater. I thought I could get away with rock-chopping the peels with a chef knife, but the pieces were barely decreasing in size. So I turned to another gadget…
My coffee grinder. I don’t buy enough whole beans to justify this purchase, but come to find out, it’s still handy. There’s only one speed on this device, but after two minutes of holding down the button, I got my zest.
So it was more than a tablespoon. I could have put the rest in with my drink, but I do enjoy an extra punch of tartness in my citrus-flavored treats. It wasn’t like anyone else in the house was going to eat it. My cat certainly wouldn’t.
After everything was chilled, the milk and food coloring were added. I try to avoid artificially dyed foods when I can, but there’s something about frozen lime desserts that demands greenness. It would taste the same without the dye, but presentation also matters. Except when I stop caring and want to get the task over and done with.
Since I don’t have an ice cream maker, I had to improvise. Now, I’ve made ice cream before—a lovely lemon number with avocado for the creamy base (and damned if I can find that exact recipe again)—without the convenience of a machine. In fact, you can put ice cream ingredients in a blender, whip it good, and pour it into a container to freeze. The caveat is that you have to whip it for a long time.
It was time to put ol’ Betsy the Immersion Blender on her chopper unit. Yet success was still out of reach. Even on the lowest setting, the chopper made the mixture rise to an uncomfortable level. I was afraid everything would spittle out from under the top, so I tapped the button intermittently until I felt the mixture was smooth enough.
Into the tub it went, then into the freezer for a couple of hours. After that, I took it out and gave it a good whisking since, like I said earlier, I’m a glutton for punishment. I was going to take it out a third time and whisk it again, but I got carried away with other chores.
An ice cream maker is convenient, but I was pretty much doing the same thing the machine would have done, albeit slower. The machine freezes the mixture as it’s churning. If I’d kept the tub out and kept stirring, the tub would have lost its chill.
The next day, I checked on the results.
Success!… for the most part. Our freezer is a little cooler than average, so there was a bit of crystallization on top, and scooping out a sample was like getting shaved lime ice until I got deeper. But this was for my own consumption (and another upcoming recipe), so it’s not like texture was a major factor in this batch.
Overall, not a bad attempt. Lots of zest in every bite, and it tastes lighter than the store-bought stuff. If I were to do this without a machine again, I’d whisk three or four times before letting the sherbet freeze all the way. I did want something more involved than mixing fruit and yogurt, and I got it. In fact, I think I may have gotten my arms workout for the week.
