Loa Tsukamoto, age 10, and her brother Kea, age 6, prepare banana, pineapple and strawberry sorbet at my birthday party in Hawaii in May 2003

A really good fruit ice cream is sweet, creamy, slightly acid, and pleasing to the eye. With nothing more than three kinds of frozen fruit and a Champion Juicer, one can produce the best frozen fruit dessert I’ve ever tasted.

Bananas give the creamy mouth feel and some of the sweetness. Pineapple provides the acidity, as well as a more intense sweetness. Strawberries give the sorbet a pleasant soft pink color. All three fruits contribute their unique aromas, which blend harmoniously.

As bananas fully ripen and begin to turn brown, peel them and store them whole in a plastic freezer bag in the freezer.

To prepare a ripe (but not over ripe) pineapple, turn the green crown counter clockwise to remove it from the fruit (this is the part that is planted to make a new pineapple plant). Cut the top and bottom from the pineapple with a large sharp knife, sit the pineapple on a flat end, and then cut off the skin, cutting downward in sections, leaving a generous margin so that you don’t have the tough brown indentations in the part you will freeze. Cut the peeled pineapple into long spears, including the tough core, small enough in width to fit through the feeder of the Champion Juicer. I use a wooden bowl instead of a wooden cutting board for this operation because of the juice produced by cutting the pineapple. Store the spears in the freezer in a plastic freezer bag. Drink the fresh pineapple juice!

Strawberries need only be rinsed and the green tops removed before placing in the freezer bags. They are commonly available already frozen in most large grocery stores and some natural food stores. Because stawberries cannot be peeled and are very absorbent, I strongly suggest avoiding strawberries that have been grown with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides.

To use the Champion Juicer to produce sorbet, assemble the grinding unit with the solid plate below the grinder instead of the screen (which is what you would use instead if you were making a juice). Chill the grinding unit in the freezer for 30 minutes before mounting on the motor unit, so the sorbet comes out cold.

Place a large bowl below the end of the grinding unit. Turn on the power and push the frozen fruit into the grinder. If the pineapple spears have frozen solid together, you can separate them by placing them inside a bag and splitting them apart with a hammer.

Blend the three sorbets together with a spoon. If you completely homogenize them, you’ll get a lovely pink sorbet, and, if not, you’ll get a beautifully swirled yellow and pink sorbet.

Tags: recipe vegetarian vegan dessert sorbet icecream fruit raw