Super Easy Sorbet

A friend of the family recently served my mother a homemade sorbet. When she told my mom how it was made, my mom was intrigued as she had never heard of the technique before. NO ICE CREAM MAKER WAS NEEDED. Oddly enough, a few days later mom was served sorbet made the exact same way at another gathering. This technique was new to both of us but as it seems to be the go-to sorbet recipe for the west side wives we decided we had to try it.

The basics were: get a can of fruit in heavy syrup & freeze it. The heavy syrup vs light or water is important. You need a high sugar content for the right consistancy. Throw it in the food processor & turn it on. Ta Da! Sorbet. We tried it w/ a can of peaches & sure enough it worked and was pretty good!

Unfortunately, I can never just leave a recipe be & since I have so much free time I decided to tinker w/ this one too. Here is what I've come up with. My version is fall / winter appropriate too! This would go great on top of some flourless chocolate cake or with some chocolate Christmas cookies. My favorite is to eat it w/ some extra dark chocolate.

Cranberry-Orange Sorbet

1 can Whole Berry Cranberry "sauce" (the ingredients should be only cranberries & sugar)
Fresh zest from 1 whole orange
2 T Grand Marnier (or OJ concentrate)

*note: vary the zest & Grand Marnier quantities based on how much you like orange marmalade if you get my jist. Using the recipe above gives it a lovely orange bordering on bitter orange quality... Which I love, my husband prefers less orange more cranberry (but he doesn't like marmalade).

1) Freeze cranberries until solid.... like overnight.

Open can & throw all 3 ingredients into food processer. You'll need to run the can under some hot water to get the cranberries to slide out. Also - you will need to chop it up w/ a knife and work the large chunks of frozen cranberries down into the blade.

Process until smooth.

There you go. Cranberry Orange Sorbet! How easy is that!