My inaugural booze lab recipe was inspired by one dominating factor: what do I already have in my kitchen. Some call it laziness, I call it making the most of convenience (with a pinch of lazy). But there I was on a Thursday night with half a bottle of Shiraz sitting on top of my refrigerator, teetering on the edge of becoming undrinkable, and little desire to drink anything alcoholic. Then, I remembered the two containers of pressed cocoa powder tucked away in one of my cabinets.
A recipe was hatched shortly thereafter. Really shortly, actually - do you guys know how easy it is to make sorbet? Spoiler alert: stupidly easy.
What’s the first thing you need to get a party started? The booze. And it’s no different even if we’re talking about a cooking party for one. I measured out 2 cups of Shiraz, a dry, fruity wine perfect for a treat like sorbet.
Now Iet’s pause for a moment and reflect on a fork in the road I faced early in the process: to boil or not to boil. I chose to boil, specifically to boil off some of the alcoholic content. Not sure it’s necessarily the “road less traveled,” but it definitely makes the “sorbet less likely to get you wasted.” Point is, you don’t have to boil it. If you want to get drunk on sorbet in the literal sense, I won’t judge. But I also won’t promise not to draw genitalia on your face after you pass out. The choice is yours.
So after letting the Shiraz simmer for about 5-10 minutes, I added 1 cup of water, 1 2/3 cups of granulated sugar and a pinch or two of salt. At this point, turn things down to a nice medium-low heat and wait for the sugar to completely dissolve.
Warning: it’s extremely difficult to tell when the sugar has fully dissolved because you are staring at a dark, red liquid.
Once I was 150% sure the sugar was dissolved, I added in 1 2/3 cups of the cocoa powder, 1/3 at a time.
Your concoction will transform into a creamy, chocolate syrup. You will be tempted to dip your finger into the mixture and lick it off accordingly. This will burn a lot. For some of you it might be worth it. Like I said, we at booze lab aren’t here to judge but we’d like to help prevent third degree burns where possible.
If you’ve avoided putting the pot to your mouth and downing the mixture whole, the last step (see: easy, right?) is adding a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. Stir it in and for all intents and purposes - the cooking part is done.
At this point, you are supposed to refrigerate your fetal-sorbet overnight. But you might remember I’m all about laziness convenience, so I recommend pouring the mixture in a thinly-walled bowl and putting it in the freezer for about an hour. Or if you aren’t using an ice-cream maker, put it in the freezer overnight and voila you have sorbet! Congratulations, you beat the system
But if you’re like me and bought an ice cream maker with that random Amazon gift card you had burning a hole in your wallet, well you know we have one short step left.
Make sure you put the ice cream maker chamber thing - sorry Kitchenaid, I’m sure it has a clever name I chose to forgot - in the freezer overnight before making this. I should have told you that at the beginning, sorry about that. If you haven’t done it yet, good things come to those who wait. Specifically the 24 hours you must now wait for the chamber to freeze.
After you assemble the pieces and parts of your ice cream maker, all you have to do is turn it on and pour in the mixture.
Let it churn (Weird Al Usher parody anyone? No? Okay, sorry) for about 15-20 minutes. At this point, you’ll probably want to pour it into an air-tight container and put it back in the freezer for a couple hours.
Worth the wait? I don’t know, you tell me:
Okay you can’t really taste a picture, but trust me when I say this bitch is RICH. The first thing you taste is the Shiraz but that quickly gives way to rich, dark chocolate. It seems more like a sorbet you would want one tiny scoop of after a meal, than a pint you could devour in one sitting after a bad day at work.
If I were to do it again, I would probably curb the chocolate to one cup and maybe add some kind of berry to cut the richness of the wine and cocoa flavors. But that’s what life is about guys: learning. Right? I don’t really know. I’m riding a pretty killer sugar high right now.
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