Cranberry Sorbet

This is less a recipe than a lesson in ingenuity. The cranberry sauce I made for Christmas Dinner did not set up properly. I had hastily copied down the recipe from the back of a bag of cranberries at the grocery store (because I buy mine in bulk over in Bandon). For Jellied Cranberry Sauce it said to bring 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water to a boil, add the berries, and boil for 10 minutes. Leave the berries whole or put through a food mill or chinois and chill. Well I made one batch of whole berry sauce and one batch of "strained" sauce and neither one set up. The whole berry sauce got eaten, but I was left with a jar of runny cranberry syrup in my refrigerator that wasn't going anywhere.

A couple weeks later a friend came to bake bread with me and have lunch. That's when the idea struck to see how I could salvage my runny sauce. Since you make a flavored sugar syrup to make sorbet, I decided to see what would happen if I just tossed the syrup, as is, into my ice cream maker and let it churn. I knew my friend would be up for the experiment, as she is not one to let things go to waste any more than I am.

Well, the color is beautiful, isn't it? We both agreed that it actually tastes quite good; tart, as cranberry sauce would be, but incredibly creamy in texture, though completely non-dairy. It's the sort of thing you might be served at a fancy restaurant to "cleanse the palate" between courses.

I'm still not sure if I copied the recipe down incorrectly or if I just messed up! Don't know that I'd go out of my way to make it again, but I am enjoying the fruits of my creativity!

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