Sublime Honey Sorbet

Have you heard of Capilano Honey?


Capilano Honey is the market leader of honey in Australia, packing premium quality honey produced by Australian beekeepers. They are a fantastic Australian company that have been having a bit of a tough time lately.

Last week there was a fire in one of the sheds at their main site in Brisbane, and earlier last month Capilano co-founder, Tim Smith sadly passed away.

Tim and his brother Bert began the business around Brisbane back in 1953, and the business name Capilano comes from the Capilano district in Canada where Tim met his wife Jill when he was stationed there in WW2  and later proposed to her on the Capilano Bridge- how romantic!

Happily there is still some great stuff going on at Capilano, where they have recently launched their first Australian Certified Organic Honey.
Capilano's normal premium blend is pure natural honey from Australian hives, but consumer and professional demand for Organic goods has led to the Australian Organic Certification for this delicious product.


When I first heard about this honey, I thought about my parents farm on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, which is also certified organic. Knowing  how tricky that is to maintain, I wondered,  how on earth do you track thousands of bees each and every day to know where they fly off to?
Well, apparently all hives must be organic, and only exposed to natural environments including the exclusion of all pesticides for pest management and crops, within 5km of surrounding land. The native flora the honey is extracted from, right down to the diet of the bees themselves needs to be certified organic as well. You must be pretty dedicated to take on that job!

I was lucky enough to be sent a lovely bottle of delcious organic honey to play with, and wanted to come up with a recipe that would show off it's flavour as well as using it's great health benefits to shake off my lingering Winter flu/lurgy.

I didn't want to actually 'cook' with the honey as heating it can destroy some of it's health giving properties, which are quite antibacterial, and Capilano purposly doesn't pasteurise the honey either as it just isn't necesary with such a great natural product.


Through my flu-ridden fog, somehow I came up with Honey Sorbet.

Perfect! It would show off all the fantastic qualities of the honey, only used 3 ingredients, was delicious, easy, and nice and soothing to swallow. Win Win for me!

200 ml Capilano Organic Honey
50 ml-ish Liquid Glucose
500 ml Water

Honey is just perfect for sweetness and flavour, you need extra for a frozen dessert. The glucose is to keep the ice crystals nice and small. You also need as much air incorporated into the mix as possible for a lovely smooth end result

For a few tips on making great sorbet, check out this earlier post :
http://intolerantchef.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/seasonal-cheer.html





Put the glucose and water into a saucepan and heat until just boiling, stirring now and then to melt the glucose

Let it cool, but while still fairly warm, stir in the honey, and keep mixing until it's totally dissolved

Pour into a shallow container and chill throughly

Churn the lovely liquid mixture in an icecream machine- I used my Kenwood IceCream Bowl Attatchment-  or pull your bowl out of the freezer and whisk from time to time as it's setting to avoid large ice crystals forming and to keep it fluffy and light

Look how gorgeous this is!

Serve your sublime Honey Sorbet as a lovely light dessert- secure in the knowlege that it's fat free, delicious, organic, and good for you. Guilt free eating at it's best!

So Dear Readers, are you more inclined to buy a product if it's certified Organic?






Disclosure: Honey was gifted by the lovely people at Capilano. Thanks guys!


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Seasonal Cheer

I really enjoy a grown-up Gin and Tonic.






It's just so elegant, the slight tartness and bitterness reflecting perhaps a jaded, though slightly more sophisticated and realistic view of the world, than the vodka cruisers of our adolescence.

On our anniversary, BigJ and I enjoyed a fantastic degustation menu at one of our favourite swanky restaurants. Now the oysters were great, the pork belly melted in our mouths, but the thing that I actually loved the most was a tiny scoop of sorbet served as a palate cleanser between courses. Maybe because it was such a yummy combination of flavours- Cranberry, Lime and Gin. The tartness and bitterness contrasting beautifully with the sweet iciness to freshen up our mouths, I promised myself I would recreate this icy alchemy at home.


There are a few secrets to a good sorbet.

You want a nice soft scoopable mix. The bigger chunky style ice crystal mix ix a granita, and doesn't have the same silkiness in your mouth that melts away quickly on your tongue

One tip is AIR. The more air you can incorporate into your mix the better. The mix will be light and fluffy and dissolve faster. You can achieve this by either churning your mix in an ice cream machine that constantly beats the mix as it freezes, or by pulling the mix out of the freezer a couple of time during the freezing process to whizz around in a blender or food processor, even just a good whisk will do.

The second tip is SOFTENING the ice crystals by including some glucose or alcohol, or both. These help stop the mix freezing too hard as both don't freeze easily themselves.

And lastly, SWEETENING. Freezing depresses the sweetness of things. There are probably very interesting scientific reasons behind this, but you just need to know to up the sweetness by about a third. Don't be off put when you taste the mix before freezing it, it really does need that extra sugar to be palatable.



Cranberry Lime and Gin Sorbet

1 3/4 cup Cranberry juice
(thanks to Christie's comp. over at FigandCherry)
1/8 cup Gin
1/8 cup Lime juice

Sugar Syrup
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup liquid glucose







1. Make the sugar syrup by combining the 3 ingredients in a saucepan over high heat and bringing to the boil. Boil for about 30 seconds, or until the mix no longer looks cloudy in the pan. Cool thoroughly.

2. Combine the Cranberry juice, gin and lime juice. (I know it's bottled, but I can't squeeze fresh ones with my hands in splints) Mix the two together.

3. Pour the cold mix into an ice cream churner and follow manufacturers instructions, OR put the bowl in the freezer, and popping the semi-frozen slush into a blender or food processor a couple of times as it freezes.

4. Use a warm spoon to scoop lovely little balls of sorbet and serve in between courses at your Christmas get-together, or as a substitute for a Gin and Tonic before dinner.

That's about the extent of my sorbet wisdom, except to tell you that this recipe is really quite yummy indeed, so I hope you give it a try!

Just don't forget that the alcohol is still all there, it hasn't been cooked out, so watch it and don't offer any to the designated driver at your soiree.


So Dear Readers, what's your favorite Grown-Up drink of choice?






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