Strawberry Lemonade Sorbet Floats
15 minutes plus chilling and freezing. Serves 6.
Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray of the River Café in London devised this ingenious method
for making sorbet using a whole lemon — peel and all! You might think the lemon flavor
would be too intense, but when combined with ripe berries it tastes just like frozen straw-
berry lemonade. The sorbet is bright and refreshing on its own, and even better in a float.
2 lemons
2 cups granulated sugar
2 pounds fresh strawberries, hulled
4½ cups ginger ale, chilled1 Trim the ends off one of the lemons and
cut it into eight wedges, discarding the
seeds. Place the lemon wedges in the bowl
of a food processor along with the sugar
and blend until very smooth. Transfer the
lemon purée to a large bowl.
2 Using the food processor once again (no
need to wash it), blend the strawberries
until smooth. (You might need to blend
the berries in two batches, depending on
the size of your processor.) Mix the straw-
berry purée into the lemon purée. Stir in
the juice of the remaining lemon. Chill the
strawberry lemonade in the refrigerator
until cold, at least two hours and up to two
days.
3 Pour the chilled lemonade into an ice
cream maker and churn it according
to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Spoon the sorbet into a container, cover
tightly, and freeze until firm, at least three
hours.4 To assemble the floats, place two small
scoops of sorbet in each of six tall glasses.
Fill each glass with about three-quarters
of a cup of ginger ale and serve immedi-
ately with long spoons.LATIMES.COM/FOOD THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019F7
Hibiscus Lime Paletas
35 minutes plus freezing. Makes 6.
When making any type of frozen dessert, keep in mind that cold temperature will dull
sweetness. For these paletas, the agua de jamaica should taste a little bit too sweet be-
fore you freeze it in the popsicle molds. I like to add a good amount of fresh lime juice to
strike a balance between sweet and tart, but feel free to vary the amount to your taste, or
even try substituting other fruit juices.½cup packed light brown sugar, plus
more as needed
½cup dried hibiscus flowers (jamaica)
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice1 Bring three cups of water to a boil in a
medium saucepan. Remove from the heat,
and stir in the brown sugar and dried hi-
biscus flowers until the sugar dissolves.
Taste a small spoonful and add more sugarif desired (see headnote). If the mixture isn’t
sweet enough, add another tablespoon of
sugar, stir to dissolve then taste again; re-
peat as needed. Cover and let steep for
about 20 minutes.
2 Strain the agua de jamaica through a fine-
mesh sieve into a small pitcher. Stir in the
lime juice, then pour the mixture into pop
molds. Freeze for at least five hours before
serving.FIVE OR FEWER
Who wants to bake on the hottest days of the year? Not me and probably not you. To get around
turning the oven on, I’ve put together these summertime sweets — all are bakeless and have five or fewer ingredients.
BYMARIAZIZKA>>>
Chill out with no-bake sweets
Mango Yogurt Pudding
20 minutes, plus 24-hour straining. Serves 6 to 8.
This sweetened yogurt pudding — inspired by Indian shrikhand — has a super thick,
creamy texture. Start making it the day before you want to eat it to give the yogurt ample
time to strain and thicken. (Or for a shortcut, you can buy prestrained yogurt like lab-
neh.)
4 cups (32 ounces) plain whole-milk
Greek yogurt(^1) cup powdered sugar, sifted
(^1) cup roasted and lightly salted shelled
pistachios
(^1) large or 2 small ripe mangoes
(^2) teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 Scoop the yogurt into a fine-mesh sieve
and set the sieve over a large bowl. Cover
with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24
hours, allowing the yogurt to thicken as
the whey drips into the bowl below. (If you
don’t have a fine-mesh sieve, you can im-
provise and hang the yogurt in a cheese-
cloth satchel suspended over a bowl.)
2 Transfer the yogurt to a clean bowl and
stir in the sugar and pistachios.
3 Peel, pit and cut the mango into pieces
and place them in the bowl of a food
processor. Blend until completely smooth.
Add the lime juice and blend to incorpo-
rate.
4 Spoon the sweetened yogurt into a large
serving dish or individual bowls. Dollop
the mango purée into the yogurt and swirl
the two together. Serve chilled.
Espresso Granita With Cardamom Cream
5 hours, largely unattended. Serves 6.
You probably already have everything you need to make espresso granita — the only
tools required are a freezer and a fork. Italians serve espresso granita with unsweetened
whipped cream, spiked here with cardamom, which is an ideal counterpart for the strong
sweetened coffee.
2 cups freshly brewed espresso or very
strong coffee
½cup granulated sugar
(^1) tablespoon coffee liqueur (optional)
1 cup heavy cream, chilled
½teaspoon ground cardamom
1 Combine the hot coffee and sugar in a
bowl, stirring until the sugar dissolves
completely. Stir in the liqueur (if using).
Pour the mixture into an eight-inch
square or equivalent size dish and cover
tightly with plastic wrap. Freeze, using a
fork to lightly scrape the surface to break
up the frozen coffee into tiny crystals
every hour, until the granita is fully
scraped and a fluffy consistency, at least
four hours total. (If you forget to scrape
the granita and it freezes solid, don’t worry
— it will still work. Just let it thaw very
slightly, then use a fork to scrape and
break it up into tiny crystals.) Cover the
dish and freeze until ready to serve.
2 A few minutes before serving the
granita, combine the cream and car-
damom in a medium bowl. Whisk by hand
until the cream holds very soft peaks. It’s
better to under-whip than to over-whip
here. As soon as the cream thickens and
holds floppy peaks, stop whisking.
3 Layer a spoonful of espresso granita in
the bottom of a pretty glass or small bowl.
Top with a dollop of cardamom cream,
followed by another spoonful of granita
and more cardamom cream. Serve im-
mediately.
Photographs byMaria Zizka