Easy 5-Ingredient Strawberry Sherbet Recipe: Cool Summer Bliss in Every Scoop!

Learn how to make a tasty and delicious strawberry sherbet using the best in season strawberries you can pick yourself. You only need 5 ingredients to make it.

We all need a little more sherbet in our lives! Correct that, we need more homemade sherbet. You can find sherbet in any grocery store freezer section and it's usually a cheap option.

However good sherbet is a little harder to come by. So I have learned and now I am about to teach you how to make your own sherbet.

Citrus flavors are the most common - orange and lime. You also see raspberry a lot as well, normally mixed together with orange and lime for rainbow sherbet. Since local strawberries are in season when I am writing this, I opted to try strawberries out.

What is Sherbet?

What is the difference between sherbet and ice cream? Well sherbet doesn't contain eggs or cream. It is made with milk and it has a more fruit centric flavor than ice cream. I would say it falls between ice cream and sorbet (which is made with no dairy). The texture is not going to be as creamy as ice cream but the flavor is often more intense, especially when homemade.

My Ice Cream Maker

I have owned a couple different types of ice cream maker. The first was a Cuisnart ice cream maker. These have become one of the most popular. You put a bowl in the freezer and once it's frozen you attach it to the machine and churn your ice cream. The downside is having to wait to freeze the bowl, it taking space up in the freezer, and you can only usually churn one batch before having to re-freeze the bowl.

The nice thing about these machines are they are very user friendly. It's easier than an old fashion one where you have to use ice and rock salt. They are also economical.

What I have been currently using is an ice cream bowl that attaches to my KitchenAid stand mixer. What I like about it as opposed to the standard stand alone ice cream makers is that I can control the speed at which the ice cream is churned. I can start it out slow and then increase it as it gets colder. Most ice cream makers only have an on and off button.

Ingredients

Here is what you will need to make this sherbet.

• 2 lbs strawberries halved, tops removed
• 1 ⅓ cups pure cane sugar
• ⅓ cup corn syrup
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Your most common strawberry container weights 1 pound, so you will need two of them. If you went strawberry picking, then you can weight out how many berries using a kitchen scale - one of my most must have kitchen tools.

Purpose of the corn syrup is to help make the ice cream easier to scoop as it will help hinder sugar crystals from forming. You could skip it but you will need to add more sugar. I would go with an additional scant ½ cup of sugar, although I have not tested that myself with this recipe.

Instructions

❤️ Why I Love This Recipe - I do love my custard based ice creams, those are made with eggs. But since we aren't using eggs for this recipe, we don't need to cook anything, so it comes together faster. I appreciate fast recipes on a hot, summer day.

The first thing you are going to do is remove the tops from your strawberries. I like to do that with my fingers as they are the best tools you got to remove the stems without taking a bunch of good berry with it.

Then slice the berries in half. Place into a large mixing bowl. I like to pick a really large bowl with way more spice than needed because it makes easier to mix everything together in the end . Put the sugar on top of the berries. Allow the berries to sit in the sugar and syrup for at least 15 mintues.

After that it's time to puree the berries. My favorite way to do this is using an immersion blender as I can do it right in the bowl. But if you don't have one, you could do this in food processor or blender. You want to get the mixture nice and smooth.

Last thing you add is the milk and vanilla extract. Then refrigerate the mixture for a couple hours until cold. The quicker the sherbet gets frozen the better, so having the mixture start out at fridge temperature makes that journey faster.

Churn the sherbet according to the directions on your ice cream maker. Ice cream makers are different sizes, so if you can't fit all the mixture in the first time, you can save it for later. If I did that I have to re-freeze my bowl first before I can, so I would usually wait for the next day to finish making the sherbet.

Then freeze for several hours to harden it up. And all that is left now is to grab some spoons and bowls and enjoy.

More Strawberry Recipes

If you enjoyed this recipe check out our other strawberry recipes. Also find out when the best time of year to buy strawberries is.

• Small Batch Strawberry Vanilla Jam
• Strawberry Rhubarb Sour Cream Muffins
• Small Batch Strawberry Blood Orange Jam
• Strawberry Applesauce
• Tahini Salad Dressing with Strawberries
• Strawberry Sweet Rolls