Royal Grapefruit & Clementine Sorbet

Can I tell you how absolutely refreshing this sorbet is? It is. So. Good.

Every year around Christmas I have a table selling Watkins (I'm an independent associate) at a local trade show. There are three things I do with the money from the booth. The first is buy some animals to donate to families in need through World Vision. This is a fun thing to do at Christmas and helps teach the children about those less fortunate. We usually purchase a goat as a Christmas present to ourselves, and then other animals (usually chickens and ducks) for Christmas presents to some family members.

The second thing I do is buy 12 months of Fruit of the Month club from Harry & David for my husband, daughters and myself. This is a treat we enjoy all year, and it's very worth the price in our opinion. (The third thing I do is use any remaining money to help with the rest of the Christmas presents!)

Our most recent fruit box from Harry & David was "Royal Grapefruit." Each one was beautiful (and of course this photo happens to be a little blurry and under bad lighting).

I have fond memories of eating grapefruit with my father many mornings with our breakfast. Grits with a pool of melted butter in the middle and a grapefruit half drizzled with honey. Oh, so good!

As I've gotten older, grapefruit has been harder on me. I can only eat a small amount at a time, so sitting down to a whole half is nearly impossible. I've missed it.

So when we had a whole box of the lovely fruit, I knew I didn't want it to go to waste but what to do? The girls were eating sections of it with nearly each meal but it would take a while to go through them and I wanted to use them up while they were still really good.

I noticed a recipe for grapefruit sorbet on the care card inserted in the box with the fruit and immediately had an idea for a variation of the recipe - and what better way to use up the grapefruit?

Projected prep time: 20 minutes; Projected churn time: 25-35 minutes
1 cup organic cane sugar
1 cup water
1 tbsp. grapefruit zest
A few curls of grapefruit rind
2 3/4 cups fresh-squeezed Royal Grapefruit (or other large grapefruit) juice
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed clementine juice
1 cup IZZE Sparkling Clementine
Grapefruit gummy candy, optional (Jelly Belly makes a good one)

Have your grapefruit zest and larger rind curls ready.

In a saucepan, combine the water and sugar, stir well. I use organic cane sugar, which has a browner color to it. It also dulls the natural color of the sorbet a little, but I wanted to use it instead of refined white sugar.

Bring to a boil and, continuously stirring, cook for about 1 minute or until the sugar dissolves.

Remove from heat and pour into a large bowl over zest and rind curls (you'll be removing the rind curls, so if you have something you can put them in - I used a tea ball - then that makes it easier) and set aside to cool.

Juice the clementines (they are small enough that I used a citrus press) ...

And juice the grapefruit (I used the Kitchen Aid citrus juicer attachment for my mixer).

Spoon out any smaller seeds that the juicer screen didn't catch.

Combine the two juices and add the Izze Sparkling Clementine.

Remove grapefruit rind curls from sugar syrup and set aside for garnish. Pour juice mixture into zest and syrup and whisk together.

Pour into ice cream maker (I use a Cuisinart that has a handy freezer bowl I keep in the freezer at all times) and churn for 25 to 35 minutes.

Spoon sorbet into an airtight freezer-safe container and freeze until firmer. I took the final photos after it had been freezing for about 2 1/2 hours. It got firmer after that. You can also eat it just like this as a slush. After I spooned it into the freezer container, I spooned out the rest and ate every last bit.

Garnish with sweetened grapefruit rind curls, clementine wedges and grapefruit gummy candy if desired.

Enjoy every refreshing bite!

This post is linking up with Seasonal Sundays over at Real Sustenance. Check out the other great recipes celebrating the season!