Creamy Satsuma Sherbet
Ringing in the new year with the best citrus fruit for snacking.
When I made Lychee Sorbet, I listed off a number of fruits I did not eat growing up. Well, you can add satsumas to that list. When I made Green Apple Spice Sorbet, I mentioned my love of eating apples. Well, it’s possible I love eating citrus even more than I love eating apples, even if the quantity I consume is less.
Both of these things—a fruit only recently discovered; a love of a certain type of fruit—are at play for me with this week’s flavor: Creamy Satsuma Sherbet. But I want to spare you from sitting through a rehash of two topics I’ve already covered. So I’ll keep it brief. In terms of satsumas, I discovered them thanks to my wife—many members of her extended family out in the Central Valley have satsuma trees, and often share their harvest with us. As for my love of citrus, let’s just say I drank an obscene amount of orange juice growing up, so much so that my father (a pediatrician), would often seem visibly distressed as I chugged yet another 12 oz glass of OJ.
Now that I got that out of the way, let’s talk about satsumas. As I indicated in the subheader, they are, in my humble opinion, the best citrus fruit for snacking1. This is partly due to the ease with which they peel.2 But it’s also because they are so consistently good. I created a little table that lists the likelihood that a given piece of snacking citrus will taste good. (Since it’s just snacking citrus, lemons, limes, yuzus, etc. are not included.)
As you can see—and will no doubt personally agree—satsumas are the clear winner. Note: I’m not talking about comparative taste here.3 I’m saying that when you peel and eat a satsuma, the chances of the fruit being of good quality are higher than any other snacking citrus fruit you might pick. A worthy achievement in my book! Now onto the matter at hand…
Our recipe this week comes from Kaldunski’s The Ice Creamery Cookbook. Her actual recipe is for a Creamy Tangerine Sherbet, but since it’s New Year’s and since satsumas have a special place in Japanese New Year celebrations, I decided to use satsumas in place of tangerines.
You start by juicing satsumas until you have 2 cups of juice. Then you dump the juice into a large bowl.
The recipe also calls for the zest of two tangerines. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to zest the soft skin of the satsumas, so I purchased a few mandarins and used the zest from those instead. I also included the juice from one mandarin, just because.
After that, you combine all the ingredients—the juice, sugar, corn syrup, heavy cream, and creme fraiche—and whisk them together.
I should probably say “We” here because as the photos above make clear, I had a helper with this recipe: my daughter. I gotta say, it’s much easier to take pictures when you have a partner to help!
Back to the recipe: whisking did not achieve a fully combined mixture, so we used the stick blender…and added a 1/4 tsp of guar gum just in case.
We chilled the final mixture in the fridge for almost 10 hours before churning. But in an unfortunate, first-time occurrence on this blog, we forgot to take a video of the churning process. :(
I love how this came out. It tastes like an orange creamsicle, with the tartness of the satsuma citrus coming through more strongly than your average bar of orange creamsicle. The cream fraiche also works well in giving a tanginess to the cream part of this recipe. It reminds me of a David Lebovitz recipe for orange creamsicle that tastes very similar to this. The only difference between his recipe and Kaldunski’s is that he uses sour cream instead of cream fraiche.
I would estimate that almost 20 different kids and adults sampled this at our New Year’s gathering, and the consensus was that it was excellent. The texture was smooth and scoopable, and the taste was excellent. Another win for Shelly Kaldunski’s recipes!
It is officially 2025. Despite the turmoil that may lie ahead, as the old song says, let’s hope that “we'll drink a cup of kindness yet.”
Happy New Year!
I’ve noticed that snacking seems to be a consistent sub-theme on the blog.
If you’ve never had a satsuma, they’re so easy to peel that it’s actually enjoyable.
In terms of which citrus fruit tastes the best, that’s a discussion for another day, but I don’t think satsumas would win. While satsumas are consistently sweet and juicy, I think their flavor lacks complexity as compared to navel oranges or ruby red grapefruits or even yuzus.
Love the chart