Grape Lemon Sorbet

I've been experimenting with sorbet recipes for use in my Ninja CREAMi. This recipe was an instant hit, and everyone is likely to enjoy it. It's a sorbet derived from the same flavor combinations in my grape lemonade smoothie.

Pineapple and I have gone through two iterations to get to this and on the second iteration we tried it with three different kinds of grapes, in the order shown in the following photo: black seedless sabel grapes, red seedless table grapes, and green seedless grapes. 

You'll notice that the middle pint and right pint are "crumbly", i.e. they have little spheres in them. This is a common occurrence with the Ninja CREAMi. The manufacturer's recommendation is to employ the "Re-spin" function to eliminate those spheres. I find, though, that I can push down with the back side of an ice cream scooper to get those pieces to clump together better.

Here are those flavors served up:

We like the sweetness level, and Pineapple says we shouldn't go with any less sugar. I also love the tartness of this treat. 

All three kinds of grapes worked well with the proportions below. We recommend eating these as a trio. If you prefer savory, then serve them in this sequence: green, then red, then black. If you prefer tart, or have a lemon sorbet in the mix, then serve them in the opposite order, ending with lemon.

We've tried this recipe with a wide variety of grapes and it has worked for each one. These grapes include: black sable, red seedless, green seedless, cotton candy, candy snap, gummy berry, thomcord (my favorite), and tear drop. I'm looking forward to trying many more flavors such as fingerling, moon drop, and concord. I keep my eyes open for grape varieties so I'm sure others will show up. What varieties of grapes do you like? 

Ingredients

• 3.5 cups grapes
• 1 - 2 lemons
• 2 tablespoons cane sugar

Instructions

1. Prepare the grape juice
1. Put the grapes in a blender
2. Blend until relatively smooth (I "pulse" for 10 seconds)
3. Press the grape pulp through a strainer to separate the juice from the seeds and skin
2. Prepare the lemon juice
1. Cut the lemons
2. Squeeze the juice out of the lemons
3. Scrape out the lemon pulp if you like
4. Blend the lemon juice and pulp
3. Take 1.75 to 2 cups grape juice (from step 1) and add the cane sugar and 1/4 cup lemon juice (from step 2)
4. Stir the mixture until smooth
5. Pour the mixture into the CREAMi pint (up to the "max fill" line)
6. Freeze for 24 hours
7. Spin as "sorbet"
8. Serve and enjoy!

Notes

I prefer straining the grapes to produce the grape juice so that I do not have any seeds in the sorbet. You may not want to go to that much trouble. In that case, you can crush enough grapes to have 1.75 cups of pulpy grape juice, and then proceed with step 3 above. Although the mixture won't be perfectly uniform, the Ninja CREAMi will smooth the final sorbet.

Although we employed regular lemons in this recipe, you might try using Meyer lemons for their sweetness and reduced tartness.