Chocolate Sorbet with an Orange and Cardamom Mist
Chocolate Sorbet with Orange and Cardamom Mist (vegan)
I came up with this Sorbet because I wanted to create an exciting desert, something visually dramatic and fun but with great flavour, and I had a lot of fun working on this.
In this desert the chocolate, cardamom and orange all work together beautifully, each bringing the best out of the other flavors and making the desert taste luxurious and indulgent but retaining subtlety and delicacy.
Using scent to add the flavour of orange and cardamom also means the chocolate flavour of the sorbet itself is very pure and distinct while the ‘mist’ allows the other flavours to subtly mingle with it while eating. And the dry ice mist, which carries the aroma of my orange and cardamom infusion, also adds an elegant but fun and memorable element to the dish.
I think its also nice that this sorbet worked out to be a dairy free dessert, most importantly because it works and tastes best this way (not using any dairy) but also I think its good to have a dessert like this that’s suitable for vegans and people that are lactose intolerant.
Sorbet –
130g caster sugar
60g liquid glucose
30g Cocoa powder
170g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids and Dairy Free i.e. ‘Montezuma’)
75g Cointreau -
2 tablespoons maple syrup
500ml boiling water.
2g xanthan gum –
First off bring the water to the boil on in a saucepan. Sift the cocoa powder in to a bowl with the sugar and xanthan gum and together.
Now pour the dry ingredients into the pan of boiling water, along with the liquid glucose and whisk the mixture while it simmer for 5 minuits.
Break up the dark chocolate into a large bowl. Pour the hot liquid mix over the chocolate. Give it all a good stir until the chocolate is all melted and mixed in then stir in the Cointreau and maple syrup.
The mix can now be chilled before freezing in an ice-cream machine or in a plastic container straight into the freezer (if doing it this way return to the sorbet every hour or so and give it a stir, repeating this until the mix is frozen). Or when your sorbet mix is chilled if you have access to them it can be fast frozen with either dry ice or liquid nitrogen.
Orange and cardamom infusion –
50 cardamom pods (gently cracked alittle)
Grated zest of 4 orange
20ml orange blossom water
15g essence of orange flower water
0.5g citric acid
250ml Still Mineral water
Place all the ingredients, except the essence of orange flower, into a pan with the mineral water. Cover the pan and bring to a gentle simmer for 30 minuits before turning off the heat and leaving to cool still covered in the pan. Once cooled stir in the essence of orange flower water before straining though a sieve into a container and storing in the fridge until needed.
When you’re ready to serve the sorbet you could either place some of this infusion in an atomizer/perfume spray for guests to spray into the air while eating the sorbet. Or, as I prefer to, you can warm alittle of the infusion and pour it over some powdered dry ice in a nice dish so that a scented fog spills out over the table carrying the orange and cardamom aroma to your guests.
Mango sorbet served on a coconut caramel disk with Orange Powder, Lime powder and Ginger and Cardamom Sherbet
Mango sorbet served on a coconut caramel disk with Orange Powder, Lime powder and Ginger and Cardamom Sherbet.
This is a dessert I came up with from what started as, pretty much, a bit of silliness. One of the lads I work with had jokingly demanded that I make him some mango sorbet because at the time I was making lots of ice cream in my free time (perfecting the flaming ice-creams I’ve written about before). So every once and a while at the start of our shift he’d playfully ask when his sorbet would be turning up, never expecting me to actually bother making it. But last week I decided I was going to finally actually make some to surprise him. The snag is, once I start thinking about a recipe or new idea I get abit obsessive, I can’t just knock up someone else’s recipe. I want to start from scratch myself and make it my own. Even once I’d come up with a sorbet I was really chuffed with I kept playing with ideas to turn it into a whole, unique dish, and at some point the idea of the powders and the sherbet clicked into place.
I think the basic idea came from two things, the idea of ‘seasoning’ your own desert with the powders and the fact that the bloke from work always brings in sweets with him to keep him going during the shift (flying saucers, chewy fruit sweets etc), so I thought having the powders and sherbet to finish of the dish would be a nice way of making it personal to him. Anyway from that basic idea and some experimenting I came up with the two citrus powders (complimenting the mango but also reflecting the small amounts of lime juice and orange liquor used in the sorbet), and the sherbet which flavoured with ginger and cardamom links together the mango and coconut (in the caramel) as flavours found together in Indian cooking, and gives a nice fresh clean taste which works great with the sticky sweetness of mango.
The sherbet was something I had a lot of fun doing and has fascinated me for a while. The fizzing sensation you get on the tongue from sherbet is produced by the carbon dioxide released when the alkaline (bicarbonate of soda) and acid (citric or tartaric, or a mix of the two) react together. We have a pain response to carbon dioxide, but released in small quantities directly on the tongue, as saliva allows the powdered acid and alkaline to combine and react, it creates a pleasant fizzing sensation. Similarly in fizzy drinks it’s the carbon dioxide bubbles, from carbonating the drink, popping on our tongue that gives the fizzing sensation. I’d been quite interested in that stuff for a while and actually have another idea that’s I’ve been working on for a while that plays with the reversal of fizzy and flat in a dish and uses dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide at - 78C and below), anyway I’ll come back to that dish another time when its finished. Right, enough rambling about that, the point is that this sherbet works really well with the sorbet, its sharpness and fizz contrasting with but complimenting the sorbets smooth texture and sweetness. The Ginger and cardamom also add a clean fresh taste along with a touch of heat from the ginger which gives complexity and layers of flavour, tastes, and sensations that come in quick succession when the sherbet is eaten with the sorbet.
Even though it started as just a playful recipe I wasn’t going to spend too much time on I’m glad that in the end I did get absorbed in it and worked on it, as the result is a beautiful, refreshing, smooth, sweet sorbet, that would be perfect served on its own but with the coconut caramel you get added texture and crunch, and the citrus powders add a little sharpness and contrast. Finally the Ginger and cardamom Sherbet, the final touch for the dessert, gives a really nice finish to the dish, with a clean fizzing sensation and flavours that compliment and contrast with the sorbets smooth texture and sweetness. When combined the sorbet, powders, sherbet and caramel are amazing together, and a single bite gives you complex layers of flavour, tastes, and sensations that come in quick succession and make it a really interesting and delicious dessert.
Recipe -
Mango sorbet served on a coconut caramel disk with Orange Powder, Lime powder and Ginger and Cardamom Sherbet. (Vegan)
For the Mango sorbet –
250g sugar syrup – made by heating 175g water and 175g sugar together in a pan stirring until the sugar dissolves and a light syrup is formed – chill before using.
Juice of two limes
2 large or 3 small mangos
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 tablespoons cointreau
¼ teaspoon Tabasco
Pinch salt (as a natural flavour enhancer for the mango)
Cut the flesh of the mangos into cubes and place in a tall measuring jug and blend to a smooth puree using a stick blender. Next add to the mango puree the cooled sugar syrup, lime juice, cardamom, cointreau, Tabasco and the pinch of salt, Blend again to bring all the ingredients together. Place the mix in an ice-cream machine and churn until mostly frozen then transfer to a container and place in the freezer to finish freezing. Place the sorbet in the fridge for five minuits before serving to soften a little.
Ginger and cardamom sherbet
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
5 tablespoon sherbet – Made by mixing a teaspoon citric acid ground to a powder with 40g icing sugar and a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Mix well to make sure the ingredients are distributed evenly through the sherbet.
Simply mix the ground ginger, ground cardamom and sherbet together, making sure they a completely mixed though.
Orange powder –
4 oranges
Peel off very thin strips of zest from the oranges using a small sharp knife, making sure not to get any of the bitter white pith on the strips of zest.
Blanch the zest and in boiling water for about 15 seconds then refresh in iced water. Repeat a couple of times to remove the bitterness from the zest. Pat the strips dry on a clean towel. Place the zest on a baking sheet and place in an oven at 100C for about an hour until dried. Once cooled grind the dried zest to a powder in a pestle and mortar. Add a pinch of icing sugar to the powder to sweeten a little if desired.
Lime powder – repeat the same process as with the orange powder but with 8 limes
Coconut caramel disks –
100g Sugar
10g Desiccated coconut
Gently heat the sugar in a heavy based pan until it melts together and continue gently heating until it reaches a light golden colour. Stir in the coconut and then immediately pour the caramel out into chef rings, just enough in each to form a thin disk. Allow to cool and harden before carefully removing from the rings.
Variation – Another way of serving this that I experimented with and works really well is to grind up the set coconut caramel to a powder and serve the sorbet with that along with the three other powders.