Dessert Disaster

The Colonel and I recently made sea grape jelly again (Yam helped us with this batch). In our freezer we had four gallon bags, stuffed to nearly bursting, with last season's bumper harvest of huge, plump sea grapes. The bags of sea grapes were taking up much of the freezer space and we were expecting some venison from our friends so we had to make room in the freezer. We had been meaning to make the jelly sooner but kept putting it off. If it weren't for the venison's impending arrival the jelly would probably still be unmade.

The jelly recipe we use calls for five cups of juice and all of those grapes gave up just over seven cups. My friend who taught me how to make this jelly said to never freeze the juice as it will have ice crystals in it, diluting it, and will not make a good jelly. What to do with the extra juice?

I decided to try making sea grape sherbet in my ice cream maker. I looked through the recipe book that came with the ice cream maker. I figured that the orange sherbet recipe would be a good fit and just substitute the orange juice with sea grape juice.

I combined 3 cups of whole milk with 1-1/4 cups of sea grape juice (the remaining juice was discarded) and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a blender until smooth.

I then poured the blended liquid into the ice cream maker and let it do its thing for 30 minutes.

Once the maker was finished with its churning I had to put the semi-frozen sea grape sherbet in a container and put it in the freezer to ripen for two hours.

When the two hours were up I scooped some of the sherbet into a dessert dish. It wasn't creamy, it had more of an ice-milk consistency.

I tasted it...The Colonel tasted it...Yam tasted it...

Three thumbs down! The sea grape sherbet was a disaster! It was not sweet enough. To be honest, I do not think adding more sugar, in any amount, to this recipe could ever make the sherbet better.

We better just stick to sea grape jelly. We know that tastes good. It has been called "Jewels on Toast" by one of my favorite foodies.