blueberry-basil sorbet

Sarah of The Delicious Life is hosting the 21st edition of Sugar High Friday. This month’s theme is “Ice Ice Baby”, here are Sarah’s instructions: How you interpret Ice Ice Baby is up to you – churn your own ice cream, freeze a fruit ice, build a sundae, hug two cookies around a snowball and call it a sandwich, or create some other de-luscious thang that’ll help us cool down in the high heat of summer. Anyone who has been reading my blog this last month should know that this theme shouldn’t be a problem for me.

The other night my friend received a large quantity of blueberries from a friend of his who went blueberry picking. He had so many blueberries he almost didn’t know what to do with them, but then he decided he wanted to make a blueberry sorbet. He called me up and asked me if I wanted to help. Since I have never made blueberry sorbet before I was curious and agreed to help him. I invited him over and we searched for some blueberry sorbet recipes. We decided to use a simple blueberry sorbet recipe which we found on epicurious. We did however alter the recipe by adding 5 medium-sized leaves of basil and 2 tablespoons of vodka to the original recipe. We added the basil and the vodka during the blending process. It was a simple and refreshing sorbet, which definitely tasted of blueberries with a small hint of basil.

Technorati Tags: Blueberry, SHF, Sorbet, Sugar High Fridays

mixed berries with lemon honey sorbet

The weather seems to be getting hotter. In the heat, it is hard to concentrate and get things done at times. Here is a fresh and simple summer dessert: mixed berries with sorbet. I made a quick lemon honey sorbet for my berry salad. If its too hot or inconvenient, I suggest buying some lemon or raspberry sorbet to spoon on top.

Lemon honey sorbet

100 g. sugar
100 g. honey
275 ml water
juice of 7 lemons

Place the sugar, honey and water in a pan, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minute. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a while. Juice your lemons. Mix the lemon juice and the sugar syrup together, cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight. Stir sorbet mixture and freeze in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Technorati Tags: Ice cream, Sorbet

c restaurant

Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting and spending sometime in the kitchen with my friend and colleague Merri Schwartz. Merri is the pastry chef at C restaurant in Vancouver. The food at C features some of the finest local seafood and produce that Vancouver has to offer. It has a wonderful reputation and is consistently rated one of the top restaurants in Vancouver for contemporary fine dining. Over the last three years at C, Merri has been making and creating fantastic sweets in the pastry kitchen. Everything in the pastry kitchen is made in-house from freshly baked artisan breads and crackers, to ice creams and sorbets and most importantly plated desserts. Shown below, are six new desserts currently on the menu at C. If you have the opportunity to dine at C, I definitely recommend it. Don’t forget to save room for dessert.

My favourites on Merri’s new menu are creamy and seasonal. Creamy is a crème brûlée with a small pool of raspberry and rose puree hidden inside; it is served with raspberries, Turkish delight, pink peppercorn shortbread and a rose caramel. Seasonal is rhubarb and almond tart plated with rhubarb jelly, crushed almonds, milk and honey ice cream with a leaf of caramelized fireweed honey.




Creamy: crème brûlée, raspberry and rose
Balance: warm and cold cherry, gingerbread, chocolate




Sharp: fromage frais cheesecake, blackcurrant, pecan
Chocolate: single estate chocolate pate, apricot, cocoa




Chilled: milk chocolate and peanut butter ice cream cake, banana
Seasonal: rhubarb and almond tart, fireweed honey

Technorati Tags: Dessert, C restaurant, Merri Schwartz