Pineapple Guava Sorbet

Our pineapple guava tree is dropping fruit like crazy this year and I decided to make sorbet with the fruit. Last year, we were “fruit minus” — I think our neighborhood squirrels got the best of it.

The tree itself is beautiful.  It looks a bit like an olive tree but with pretty white and pink flowers and bears small green grenade-looking fruit that tastes tropical and sweet; I would say it tastes more like a passion fruit than a guava. We wait all year for it to produce fruit. They’re fun to eat because you basically bite off one end and suck the yummy fruit right out.

My girls are always begging me to get the ice cream maker out so I thought it would be fun to try some sorbet with the pineapple guava. The girls climbed the tree and shook it like crazy until the fruit came tumbling down. They had so much fun; this is what being a kid is all about! They collected the fruit in their dresses and we headed toward the kitchen.

To make the sorbet, I cut the tops off the fruit (didn’t want to use our biting technique for this application) and the girls squeezed out the “meat” into a bowl. We then tossed the fruit in the blender, strained it to get rid of the grittiness of the tiny seeds, mixed it with ½ cup of lemonade, put it in the ice cream maker, and half an hour later we had cool, refreshing sorbet.

Pineapple guava sorbet makes a fantastic frozen dessert because it’s not too sweet, but rather crisp, a little tart, vaguely tropical, and just so, so good. Plus, the girls felt like it was such an extra special treat because they were involved in every step of the process.

Thanks to this Indian summer heat, I head off now to make another batch. Have a great weekend!