Champagne sorbet for New Year 2019

Nice cup of champagne sorbet

Traditional New Year is celebrated by eating marzipan cake. However, some days ago I noticed, that a local ice cream shop here in Vejle was selling champagne sorbet. But buy champagne sorbet, when you have your own ice cream machine. I will not use the "real stuff" in form of champagne, as such a bottle cost too much. I prefer to drink the champagne. So instead of I am using a sweet Asti :-)


I found this recipe on champagne sorbet by Valdemarsro, which I decided to use without any modification. 

The texture of this champagne sorbet is very, very soft, so you could scoop the sorbet directly from the freezer. The taste of this sorbet reminds me about the taste of elderflower, which gave me the idea of making elderflower sorbet, which could be served together with a glass of sweet sparkling wine.

Making champagne sorbet is quiet time consuming, as you have to let the sorbet mixture cold 3-4 hours or night over, before you can actually run it on the ice cream machine. And the freezing process on the ice cream machine takes 1 hour, before you can place the sorbet in the -18'C freezer for further freezing.

The main íssue here is the use of sparkling wine in the this sorbet. Addition of alcohol into ice rceam/sorbet is lowering the overall freezing point of the ice cream/sorbet and thereby makes it more difficult to freeze. Lowering the freezing point also means, that the ice cream/sorbet become more soft/less hard, when you scoop it. Therefore you should not take out the ice cream/sorbet from the freezer 20 minutes before serving it. 
So it will actually be a benefit, if you use a sparking wine with a lower amount of alcohol compared to sparkling wine with more than 10% alcohol.

I am wondering if the use of whipped egg white could help to build more overrun (air incorporation) in the final sorbet ?

Champagne sorbet:

• 180 g sugar
• 2 dl water
• 4 dl sparkling wine 

1. Add the water and sugar into a cooking pot, and heat it up until, the sugar is dissolved. 
2. Let the liquid part cool down slightly, before the sparkling wine is poured in. 
3. Cold down this sorbet mixture  for min 4 hours or night over in the refrigerator.
4. Pour the sorbet mixture into the ice cream machine. It takes approx 30 minutes, before the mixture before thicker. Let the ice cream machine run for approx 1 hour. 
5. Pour the champagne sorbet into the containers, which can be frozen.
6. Place the champagne sorbet in the freezer for 3-4 hours, before you serve it.