This Lemon Sorbet Tastes Like a Beam of Sunlight — Ready in About 45 Minutes

I realize that in a week when the most public spaces part sludge, part abyss, you might not have frozen desserts on your mind, but I cannot hide what we are: year-round ice cream people. Maybe it’s just the peculiarity of a steam-heated apartment, keeping it a balmy 78 degrees in here all winter, but snow on the ground has never kept us from cold treats, especially lemon sorbet, which tastes the way beams of sunlight feel on your skin.

At-a-glance

Ever since I made the impulsiest impulse purchase* in the early lockdown days of a fancy ice cream maker, we’ve been making it fairly regularly, tweaking the recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop until it’s exactly as full-bodied and robustly tart-sweet as we like it. What sets it apart from other recipes is infusing the simple syrup with zest, giving it a bigger flavor. I strain both the zest and the lemon-juice pulp out, ensuring that there are no papery flecks in the final sorbet. I have shoved bowls of this into several friends’ hands over the last couple weeks and I love seeing the surprise on faces from just how explosive the flavor is. Think of it like wintery lemonade.

• Let me make it abundantly clear that a fancy ice cream maker sits squarely on the want side of the need-want continuum. We love ours but hardly think it’s a Top 10 kitchen item. Ice cream makers fall into two categories — well, three if you count old-school hand-cranked salt-chilled ones — but I’ll focus on electric machines here. The first type has bowls that must be frozen for 1–2 days before use; the ice cream still needs finishing in the freezer after churning. You can use them once, then they must chill again for a couple of days before another batch. I had a standalone Cuisinart at one point and later the KitchenAid attachment; they work fine. The fancier (bigger and heavier) kind I impulse-bought has a compressor, so it freezes into ice cream in the machine in 30–45 minutes and requires no advance planning to use again.

Lemon Sorbet

Notes from the author: David Lebovitz’s original calls for 1 cup granulated sugar and up to 1¼ cups if you prefer sweeter. The author uses less but stresses tasting before churning — freezing mutes flavors, so the mix should be slightly sweeter than you want the finished sorbet. If you need advice on making ice cream without a machine, David has guidance.

Ingredients

Method

1. In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup of the water, all of the sugar, and the finely grated lemon zest. Heat, stirring, until the sugar is completely dissolved, usually just before it begins to simmer.

2. Add the remaining 2 cups cold water and chill the mixture completely. (Author’s tip: she hastens this by planting the pot in the snow on the terrace — it chills quickly.)

3. Set a fine-mesh strainer over a large bowl (or a 4-cup measuring cup) and juice the lemons over it until you have 1 cup of pulp-free juice. Chill the juice as well.

4. Pour the chilled syrup through the strainer to remove the zest while adding it to the lemon juice. (The article stops at this point in the printed excerpt; logically, once strained and chilled, combine syrup and juice, taste, adjust sugar if needed, chill thoroughly, then churn in your machine according to its instructions, finishing the sorbet in the freezer if required.)

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