Mango Sorbet

Kitchen gadgets can be important.  I happen to think that my ice cream maker is one of those important ones.  Nothing tastes as good as homemade ice cream.  It evokes childhood memories of eating our once-a-summer homemade ice cream made in the machine using rock salt.  How delicious that was!!  However, consuming food made of whole milk, whipping cream and sugar may not be on your healthy food list.  I stumbled upon this recipe from Ina Garten (who doesn't love Barefoot Contessa).  This recipe is from her Barefoot in Paris cookbook (I think the only one of hers I do not own). It is for an ice cream bombe dessert -- I didn't make the whole dessert just the mango sorbet portion of it.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/ice-cream-bombe-recipe/index.html

I, of course, can be quite lazy with food preparation and am always looking for shortcuts. Who wants to cut and peel and seed a bunch of mangoes? Not me. This recipe sat for a while until I stumbled upon a whole container of presliced mangoes at my grocery store.  Now these containers of cut fruit can be pricey - but that day it was on sale! So I bought it and brought it home. I followed the directions and pureed them in my food processor. I only ended up with about 1 1/2 cups of mango puree instead of 5 cups.  No worries! Just adjust the recipe accordingly.  I used 1/3 of all the ingredients and plopped it into the ice cream maker (I have the Cuisinart Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker) as we sat down to dinner.  Dessert was waiting for us -- and it ended up being the perfect amount for our family of 4. *Tip -- always keep your ice cream freezer bowl in your freezer, that way it is always ready for spontaneous ice cream making adventures.

This is the mixture before putting it in the ice cream maker:

Here's one happy camper!

No, make that 2 happy campers!

And half a happy camper -- he doesn't get too excited about dessert -- but he is pretty cute! Notice he is eating the sorbet on top of the banana cake from the previous post.  Interesting.....