This week on the podcast, we discussed how hard it is to find sugar-free desserts. While there are some limited varieties of cookies and other sweets, finding sugar-free varieties of my favorite summer treats has frustrated me for years. Something I have been craving for a while now is a dollop of sherbet in a bit of ginger ale or 7-up for a sort-of ginger ale float, if you will, but I have yet to find a sugar-free sherbet or sorbet. Giving up after a thorough search, I decided I would have to make it myself, but even that proved challenging because all the recipes I found involved a complex list of ingredients and lots of time cooking (yes, cooking) the various fruits and sweeteners. What I finally settled on was a delicious-sounding nectarine sorbet that sounded like the perfect answer, so I thought I’d give it a try.
This nectarine sorbet recipe (find the original here) was quite simple; the worst part was peeling the nectarines. The recipe called for very ripe fruit, and it just so happened that I had a bag of nectarines that were getting pretty long in the tooth. They were getting downright mushy and not entirely suitable for anything else, so peeling them was more like sliding them out of their already loose skins, and it was quite a messy job.
The recipe also called for making a simple syrup out of sugar and water and then letting it cool, but in my experience with various artificial sweeteners, I’ve found that the sweetener dissolves into the water just fine, only to recrystallize once it cools. Christen and I discussed this problem and decided I should just replicate the recipe as closely as possible to judge the true merits of the recipe. So, that’s what I did.
I used a combination of generic erythritol and Swerve because I didn’t have enough of either one. Sure enough, as soon as the “syrup” started to cool, it became cloudy. It did not seem to affect the consistency of the finished product, though, and I wanted to change as little as possible about the recipe, so I used it as is.
The other thing I questioned about the recipe was that it called for two tablespoons of rum, which is not a standard ingredient in sorbet, but I assumed might assist with preventing it from freezing too hard and crystallizing, which would be a granita and not a sorbet. I’m not sure if it helped or not, but it didn’t hurt.
I put the blended concoction into my ice cream freezer and was quite disappointed that it barely filled it ¼ of the way. As a result, there wasn’t enough movement of the mixture to freeze, so after almost an hour of listening to the annoying hum, I finally poured it into a plastic container and threw it in the fridge. Thus, we didn’t get to eat any that first night.
I will say that the result was quite tasty, if a little too sweet. I don’t know if that was because of the erythritol (one was a 1:1, and the other was not) or if the nectarines themselves were too sweet. Either way, I think a little less sweetener would be better. As for the texture, it scooped smoothly and was not grainy or gritty in any way. I would like to try it in the ice cream freezer, though, so for future variations, I’d like to try the following:
- Increasing the volume to see if it works in the ice cream freezer when it’s full
- Eliminating the alcohol
- Skip the “syrup” step
- Adding dairy to make it a sherbet
- Trying other summer fruits
If you’ve ever made a sherbet or sorbet, especially if it was sugar-free, please comment below and share your experience. I’d love to hear about it. And don’t forget to check out our previous sugar-free recipes here on the blog:
- Mexican Wedding Cookies: December 6, 2021
- Mimi’s Banana Pudding: December 9, 2021
- Keto PB Cookies: December 11, 2021
- Cake Mix Cookies: January 8, 2022
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