Key lime pie is probably my favorite thing ever. Good key lime pie — not nasty, green, gelatinous, sorry-excuse-for-key-lime pie. As such, I also love other stuff with key lime juice. And I am actually allowed to eat small amounts of sherbet on this diet. So when my friend Isabel mentioned that she was making key lime sherbet the other day, I was all over it.
You know those new Haagen Dazs flavors that have five ingredients? Well, this only has four. So there.
If you haven’t made homemade ice cream or sherbet, you definitely need to try it, ASAP. When my brother and I were little, my mom used to make ice cream in the summer and we would help. It would take forever, and we would all take turns churning the thing. But it was really, really good. Now you can get the same results in about 20 minutes with the magical machine below:
I was going to draw a heart around it, Perez Hilton-style, but I couldn’t get Paint to cooperate. Boo. Anyway, the recipe I was working from calls for heavy cream and whole milk. We only drink skim milk, and I wanted to try making it slightly less fattening, so I decided to go with heavy cream and skim milk and hope for the best.
The thing is, I have had homemade ice cream that was made with Splenda and probably other blasphemous things, and it tasted fine but the consistency was really weird. When you tried to eat it, little shards would flake off. Ew. So obviously I wanted to avoid that.
I ended up having to add WAY more sugar than the recipe called for, at least a quarter cup more and maybe even a half cup more. I also added some more cream and left it in the ice cream maker for longer than I normally need to. It wasn’t very thick when I stopped it (as you can see above), but it did taste amazing. I put it in the freezer overnight and it firmed up significantly. So my verdict? Go with whole milk if you want, but if you only have 2% or skim, that’s OK, too.
Key lime sherbet
1 cup Key lime juice (squeeze it yourself from the key limes available at some grocery stores, or just buy a bottle. Make sure it is not regular lime juice)
1/4 cup Key lime zest (I didn’t use this, but if you have actual key limes, go for it)
1 1/2 cups sugar (to start)
1/2 cup heavy cream (I added a bit more)
1 1/2 cups whole milk
Whisk sugar, key lime juice and zest together in a large bowl. Stir in sugar, cream and milk. Taste the mixture. If it is not sweet enough, add more sugar by spoonfuls. Add more milk (or cream) to mellow out the flavor a bit.
Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker. I left mine going for about 35 minutes, but check on it after 20. Put sherbet in the freezer overnight to firm.
I ALWAYS have issues with the texture of homemade ice cream! It’s never solid enough, but I find that putting it in the freezer overnight does the trick. It’s so freakin’ yummy, though, I don’t care!
I made some creamsicle ice cream (soooo good) for our Super Bowl party and it was soft, but still thicker than this. And it firmed up faster, too. But you’re right: It tastes too good to care. We ate some of the runny almost-sherbet last night, and there were no complaints!
So, I think this might be even better with pieces of graham cracker crust mixed in. I will definitely try that next time.
Hubby received a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker for Father’s Day. He’s quite a fan of Key Lime Pie so we’ll definitely be making this Key Lime Sherbet to try very soon. Thanks for posting this recipe!