First of all, a big sorry for staying away from this lovely place and all you wonderful readers for almost over a month. I had been spending time with family and had taken off from work and was travelling. This is pretty much that kept me busy all these days. And I didn’t get chance to shoot as well. Though I managed to capture the travel to mountains in north, but practically I didn’t shoot any self cooked meal. It was last week only, when I joined back at work and things started getting normal {read unexciting}. And that is when, I wanted to bring back the fun to the life. I wanted to cook. I wanted to shoot and I wanted to blog! And here I am with this lovely Cherry Chocolate Chunk Champagne Sorbet, which you can call a gourmet recipe which is extremely easy to whip up in no time. And it has the goodness of seasonal fresh cherries, dark chocolate and champagne. Ain’t it the gourmet, the fanciest stuff you would get. I have been baking/cooking with seasonal stone fruits {cherries, plums, peaches etc.} off late.
Seasonal produce is always the best ingredient to work with. While we were travelling to the mountains, we stayed over for a couple of days in Mukteshwar, a calm, serene and beautiful place located at the uphills of Uttarakhand. The place was full of stone fruit orchards and we were lucky enough to pick the juiciest and the freshest of the plums, apricots and cherries ever, right off those orchards. That place always amazes me with it’s beauty and peacefulness, every time I visit. And I would never want to come back, which just makes me feel nostalgic right now. But we returned with some precious memories and bags full of those lovely stone fruits. I had received this pretty bottle of sparkling rose from Jacob’s Creek. So the timing was perfect and the weather called for a Cherry Chocolate Chunk Champagne Sorbet.
The Jacob’s Creek Sparkling Rosé is a non-vintage wine made from selected Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay and Jacob’s Creek Pinot Noir grapes displaying delicate fresh berry flavours and an attractive pink colour. It is ideal as an aperitif, with deserts.
We enjoyed the delicate flavor of the wine with some dark chocolate gifted by a friend. And with the leftover wine, I made this delish sorbet. The sorbet can be made without an ice cream, as it stays soft due to the added alcohol in it, which causes lesser ice crystals to form. This cherry chocolate chunk sorbet is amazingly refreshing with fresh cherries and even lighter and delicate sprakling rose wine. This cherry sorbet generally it’s natural sweetness from the great amount of fruits that goes into. That natural sweetness is balanced by the acidity of the delicate sparkling wine. And to make it even better, I threw in some dark chocolate chunks. It was a perfect and one of a heavenly pairing, as dark chocolate pairs pretty amazing both with the cherries and with the sparking rose. I made this in an ice cream maker, but you can make this without one. And it will still be good.
- 500 gm fresh cherries (pitted)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup light corn syrup
- 3/4 cup champagne (or any other sparkling)
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks/chips
- Puree the cherries in a food processor, until smooth.
- Combine pureed fruit, sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan and bring to simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
- Remove from heat immediately and put in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours.
- Strain through a sieve into a bowl, if you prefer a smoother texture.
- Add the champagne and chill thoroughly.
- Pour the sorbet base into the frozen canister of ice cream maker and spin until the consistency of very softly whipped cream is reached (skip to next step if not using the ice cream maker).
- Mix in the dark chocolate chunks/chips.
- Transfer the sorbet into a storage container and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.
