The Sweet Ingredient You Need For Mouthwatering Raspberry Sorbet

When craving a cold treat, many turn to ice cream. It's a universally loved food in all its forms and flavors, and will never go out of style. However, ice cream contains a lot of fat, which can make it feel heavy, especially following a big meal. But instead of giving up your dreams of a chilled dessert, turn to sorbet, ice cream's equally delicious and slightly more nutritious counterpart. Store-bought sorbet can be just as tasty as ice cream, but if you make it from scratch, you can alter the flavor by adding different ingredients. A raspberry sorbet, for example, might be tart on its own, but by sweetening it with a tablespoon of vanilla extract, you can take your sour sorbet to another level.

Unsurprisingly, vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor in the United States, but you don't tend to see vanilla-flavored sorbet. This likely has to do with the fact that a sweetener is almost always added to sorbet in the first place. To sweeten the fruit base, sweeteners like plain sugar, corn syrup, or simple syrup are often used; in fact, not using enough sweetener is one of the biggest mistakes to avoid when making a refreshing sorbet. These are used for flavor but also for texture since they help ensure that the sorbet doesn't freeze. But plain sugar is pretty one-dimensional, so we recommend adding a bit of vanilla extract for a more sophisticated flavor. Vanilla helps balance out the raspberry's tartness, too, toning down its intensity and highlighting each ingredient's distinctness.

To make Tasting Table's refreshing raspberry vanilla sorbet, created by recipe developer Michelle McGlinn, you'll add a tablespoon of vanilla extract to 4 cups of frozen raspberries in a food processor. You'll then add a half cup of simple syrup, which acts as the additional sweetener, and 2 tablespoons of vodka, which is the secret to a velvety-smooth sorbet because it lowers the freezing point of the mixture. Once you've added these, you'll blend everything until the mixture is nice and smooth. After taste testing the sorbet, you'll notice that the vanilla, in particular, stands out, as it creates a sweet and creamy aroma almost reminiscent of ice cream.

If you love the vanilla addition to raspberry sorbet and wish it were even more fragrant, use whole vanilla bean pods or a vanilla bean paste instead of just vanilla extract. Both alternatives offer more intense aromas and flavors and give your sorbet a more interesting visual appeal with their small vanilla bean flecks.