Pick Your Favorite Icy Indulgence
What’s your favorite ice-cold indulgence? Sorbet? Ice cream? Sherbet? We scoured the internet for the best, tastiest, fat-free to fat-full recipes for creamy, dreamy, fruity frozen desserts. You’ll need an ice cream machine for some of these recipes, and you can get one at the Walmart in Lafayette on Hwy 287. But for others, all you need is a little sugar, flavoring and a freezer!
Sweetly, Scrummy Sorbets and Granitas
This frozen treat is as easy as it gets – fruit and sugar, and sometimes a boozy add in. The Food Network celebrity chefs love a good frozen dessert as much as we do and have whipped up their favorites so we can enjoy these summertime sensations.
Alton Brown loves fresh berry and stone fruit combos and starts with two pounds strawberries and fruits like nectarines or plums, which you pit and chop. Pureeing is key to the sorbet process, and for Alton’s recipe, you need sugar, lemon juice, vodka and salt. Scoop that into your ice cream maker, churn, and then freeze for four hours.
Giada de Laurentiis and her Aunt Raffy published a recipe made with berries (your choice) and a few other surprising ingredients: olive oil, sugar, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. The result is a sweet and sour “sorbetto” that Giada serves with fresh berries and a drizzle of balsamic. Talk about an unexpected spin on a sweet treat!
The sorbet page of All Recipes will take you to coconut-lime, banana, pink grapefruit-blueberry, chocolate banana, peach-pineapple, mango-orange and celery sorbets. What will they think of next?
Giada also makes a sorbet “granita” – so-called because instead of churning in an ice cream maker, she spreads it into a layer to freeze. The frozen concoction is then scraped and broken into pieces that are much coarser and icier than sorbet. Giada combines strawberries and mint in this recipe, adds mascarpone cheese (an Italian soft cheese made from cream), and the result is as refreshing as it is delectable!
Or try the Pioneer Woman’s watermelon granita, maybe the simplest yet, is made from watermelon blitzed in a blender, with sugar and lime juice.
Creamy, Dreamy, Sherbets and Ice Creams
Sherbet is the fruitier cousin of ice cream, usually pastel in color and creamy in texture. It’s full of fruity flavor – raspberry to rainbow with orange and lime – but also has dairy added in for the creaminess of ice cream, but without the added fat. Sherbet makes an excellent milkshake and/or smoothie, so keep that in mind the next time you’re in the mood for a slurpy sweet treat.
Taste of Home has a couple of cool recipes, refreshing cranberry, and black cherry made with a sugar substitute and caffeine-free black cherry soda, as well as a cantaloupe sherbet made with the fruit, plus milk and honey, and a grape sherbet made with grape juice and half and half.
Food and Wine offers up 21 of the best homemade ice cream recipes, whether you’re a purist and prefer plain old vanilla, or like your ice cream loaded with flavored mix-ins. And of course, because it’s Food and Wine, you’ll find the unique and exotic here, from Rosewater and Saffron (aka Bastani Irani), and Vanilla-Almond with Cherries and Pistachios to vanilla-bean, coffee and Guinness ice cream with chocolate covered pretzels! There are more flavors than we can mention here, but trust us – these ice creams are above and beyond the norm!
But don’t stop there! Martha Stewart’s collection of 20 “absolutely delicious” homemade ice cream recipes,takes the cake – or the cookies! She has the classic flavors like vanilla and strawberry, to which she added inspired combinations like Rose Geranium and Cardamom Ice Cream, Banana Caramel, Pumpkin and Vegan Avocado Ice Cream. That last one combines mashed avocados, coconut milk, lemon zest and juice plus xanthan gum. The color will remind you of pistachio, but the flavor is altogether unlike anything you’ve ever tasted!
The Dreamy Kitchens of Colliers Hill
The kitchens in the new homes in the master-planned community of Colliers Hill are the perfect place to whip up cool treats. Whether in the paired offerings built by KB Home, or any of the single-family floor plans from Century Communities and Richmond American Homes. Life is better on the Hill, so many more options at this fast-growing new home community in Northern Colorado! Check out the amenities and the beautiful model homes from three top Colorado builders – with a variety of designs from the high $300s.
