Lemon Bar Sherbet
Tart & tangy. Sweet & crumbly.
I don’t quite understand the saying, “When life gives you lemons…” I mean, I understand the sentiment it’s getting at. And it gets at said sentiment in a pithy way. But why make lemons the culinary villain? Sure, lemons are excellent when sweetened—as we’re hopefully going to demonstrate with this week’s flavor—but they are excellent in unsweetened form, as evidenced by their many, many uses outside the dessert/pastry context: baked on top of fish or chicken; squeezed over shrimp cocktail or oysters or fish tacos; juiced into many salad dressings and marinades; or simply sliced and added to an ice cold glass of water. I’m probably going way above my pay grade by saying this, but: perhaps we should retire the phrase?1
And yet it would probably be premature to do so because this week’s flavor was a case of life giving me lemons. Literally. Friends of the blog (and past recipients of the Salted Caramel and Yuzu Sorbet efforts) recently dropped off a bag of lemons from their tree; I immediately knew I wanted to use them for this week’s ice cream. After a bit of thought, an idea came to me: lemon sherbet with a shortbread cookie crust mix-in. In other words, Lemon Bar Sherbet!
I love lemon bars, but I’ve never made ‘em before, so we’ll be venturing into some uncharted territory here when we reach the mix-in portion of this recipe. Luckily, the sherbet base is a simple one that I’ve made before—and quite recently to boot. Here are the sherbet ingredients:
I’m using the same recipe I used to make the Satsuma Sherbet—from Shelly Kaldunski’s book—except freshly squeezed lemon juice instead of satsuma juice. In addition, I hewed more closely to Kaldunski’s recommended sugar amount. She calls for 1/2 cup sugar and a 1/2 cup of corn syrup. With the Satsuma Sherbet, I used about 1/2 cup total of sugar and corn syrup combined (on account of the satsumas already being sweet). For this week, I decided to go with a bit more to offset the tartness of the lemon: I used scant 3/4 cup of sugar plus 2 tablespoons of corn syrup.
But the first thing you gotta do is zest a lemon and then juice a bunch more!
It’s true what they say: getting lemon juice on an open cut stings like holy hell. I have a bad habit of picking at my cuticles, and I paid the price for it every time I removed a squished lemon from the lemon squeezer.
That said, the process after juicing is very, very easy:
I gave it a 30-second blast with the immersion blender and then placed it in the refrigerator to chill.
Later in the evening, I set about making the shortbread cookie mix-in, but I had a helper—my daughter! I used a recipe from none other than Melissa Clark (who will be making another appearance soon during Chocolate month). When my daughter saw that Melissa Clark’s recipe was for blueberry lemon bars, she asked why I didn’t include blueberries in the sherbet. Fair question, but one step at a time. The fact that I pulled it together to make the shortbread feels like a huge accomplishment!
Unfortunately, we forgot to document the process of making the shortbread. So this is all you get:
Baked it for about 40 minutes, which produced this:
The only thing left to do was start the churning. Here it is:
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first: the shortbread mix-in was a little bit of a disappointment. It tastes quite good on its own, but its flavor doesn’t stand up against the strength of the lemon flavor in the sherbet. I feel like I couldn’t taste the shortbread as much as I wanted. It was good, but not strong enough. I can summarize the needed change in four words: more sugar, more butter. Put differently, I think a sweeter, more buttery shortbread would have improved this as a mix-in substantially.
Which then begs the question: Did Melissa Clark fail us?
Much like a broken clock is right twice a day, the recipe GOAT can’t hit a home run every time. And I wonder if she deliberately designed the shortbread crust to be not overly sweet because it’s a recipe for Blueberry Lemon bars. Blueberry. Folks, this very well could be a case of user error.
As far as the sherbet, I thought it came out good. Very tart from the lemon juice, but still creamy and sweet enough to be thoroughly enjoyable. And the shortbread does cut the sourness enough so the lemon doesn’t completely overwhelm you. Put it did make my mouth pucker! If I were ever to open an ice cream shop (maybe in the next life), I would try to perfect this recipe. Because even though the shortbread wasn’t quite up to par during this go around, I think it has amazing potential when combined with this sherbet.
One last thing before I end: this week’s effort epitomizes everything I want this blog to be about. Some friends of ours shared some lemons. I used those lemons to make some ice cream. And then we shared the ice cream we made with those same friends. We even got to hang out for 30 minutes when we dropped off their portion, in true ice cream social style (though we sat around eating fruit, not ice cream, lol). Felt like a small step against the growing loneliness and isolation so pervasive in modern life.
Friends, we’ve reached the end of January. Next week, Chocolate Month begins! We’re gonna kick things off with a recipe from Jeni’s. See you then!
The problem is it’s catchy and evocative, and there are no good replacement contenders. I just can’t see, “When life shovels a pile of shit on you, remain calm and immediately return home to shower” ever catching on.