Do It Yourself: A Cool Sorbet with Raspberry Sauce
 
Do It Yourself: A Cool Sorbet with Raspberry Sauce Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

No less than the need for warmth in cold-weather desserts, the need for coolness in warm-weather desserts is obvious. But, we hear endlessly, ice cream isn't a smart dietary move on a hot day because it's full of fat and calories. Have iced tea instead, we are told. Sure. Iced tea instead of ice cream. Right. Only one problem: Iced tea isn't dessert!

Sorbet is a handy way to solve the need for a cold dessert that isn't hugely caloric. It doesn't contain the cream found in ice cream -- or even the milk found in sherbet. Of course, it has calories from sugar and fruit or other flavors (hey, nothing's perfect).

This chocolate sorbet moves pretty far back in the direction of calories and fat, but it's good. And it's even better with a raspberry sauce that tosses in more calories. Oh, heck, just turn up the air conditioner.

Chocolate Sorbet with Raspberry Sauce

Recipe adapted slightly from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection/Chocolate.

Ingredients for the Sorbet:

2 cups water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Ingredients for Raspberry Sauce:

2 cups fresh raspberries, divided
1 Tbs. powdered sugar
1 or 2 drops of lemon juice
1 Tbs. water

Preparation for the Sorbet:

Put the water and granulated sugar in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then bring to the boil without further stirring. Remove saucepan from the heat, add the cocoa and chocolate and whisk to blend completely.

Return saucepan to the heat and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils, remove from heat and cool the pan in a bath of cold or iced water for 10 minutes or more until the mixture has cooled thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into an ice cream machine, follow manufacturer's instructions and freeze the result overnight. If you don't have an ice-cream machine, pour mixture into a shallow pan and freeze 3 hours or until firm. Scoop into a small mixer bowl and beat with an electric mixer a minute or more until it is smooth. Freeze in a shallow pan for another 3 hours, and repeat beating and freezing once or twice more before freezing overnight.

Preparation for the Sauce:

Set aside a few raspberries. Combine the remaining raspberries, powdered sugar, lemon juice and water in a food processor until smooth. Strain to remove the seeds.

Divide sauce among chilled plates and scoop sorbet onto sauce. Garnish each plate with raspberries and serve.

Serves: 6

Nutrition information per serving: Calories 230: Carbohydrates 47 g, Protein 3 g, Fat 7 g, including sat. fat 4 g, Cholesterol 0 mg, Sodium 4 mg, Calcium 26 mg, Dietary fiber 4 g. Diabetic exchanges per serving: 3-1/2 other carb. exch., and 1-1/2 fat exch.