June 6, 2011

Chocolate Stout Sorbet (Low Carb)

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Raise your hand if you like beer. Raise your hand if you like chocolate. Okay, now raise your hand if you like beer and chocolate together. Wow, I saw a lot of hands go down in the audience. I saw a lot of hesitant fluttering of hands, unsure of whether to stay up or not. Perhaps these hands have never had chocolate and beer together. Perhaps they have never tried the many new variations of beers that are actually flavoured with chocolate. These hands don’t know what they are missing!

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Long before there was ever fancy microbrew beer with added chocolate flavouring, there was Guinness. I’ve always maintained that drinking a glass of Guinness is like drinking a glass of chocolate milk. Both in the slight chocolatey flavour of the beer, and the thick richness with which it goes down your gullet and settles in your stomach. So for me, coming across porters and stouts in recent years that are actually designed to taste like chocolate was not such a great stretch. But as a girl who started off her beer-drinking days by downing a great lot of Molson Canadian, a pale lager, I can understand that for some, beer and chocolate might seem like an odd combination.

Starting a month or so before St. Patrick’s Day, I saw a lot of chocolate/beer recipes popping up, particularly ones that used Guinness. I was definitely intrigued, and even bookmarked a few to adapt for low carb, but never quite got around to it. I figured the moment had passed, since St. Paddy’s day was come and gone. And then I saw THIS gorgeous image on Scoop Adventures. It looked so rich and chocolatey and as I am currently having a little love affair with my ice cream maker, I knew I had to make it. I didn’t have any porter, but I did have a bottle of stout, in the form of Guinness. Close enough!

The Results: Deeee-lishus. This really makes for a refreshing, bold, interesting sorbet. The beer has quite a presence, so it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s malty and yeasty and rather intense, but I loved it. So did my husband. I didn’t even bother to feed it to the kids, I knew that they would take one taste, thinking it was all chocolate, and then the rest would go to waste. It’s not really the type of treat you give a child!

In the original instructions, she said you could cut back on the beer a bit and add more water. I think you would lose something by doing so but to each his own. If you freeze it for longer than a few hours, it will get quite hard, but a little time in the fridge (half an hour to an hour) and it will soften nicely.

The beer makes it REALLY melty at room temperature, so my pictures were done in haste. If you look closely, you can see me and my camera in the reflection of the spoon. Whoops! I simply didn’t have time to pay attention to those little details, but duly noted that a shiny spoon in a bright window equals seeing a funny, distorted reflection of myself.

Chocolate Stout Sorbet

1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup granulated erythritol
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
4 oz high % cacao chocolate (I used 90%), finely chopped
3/4 cup stout
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp stevia extract

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, stir together water, erythritol, cocoa powder and salt. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly and boil for 45 seconds.

Remove from heat and stir in chopped chocolate. Add vanilla, stevia and beer and stir to combine. Transfer to a blender and blend for 15 seconds. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.

Give mixture one final quick blend to incorporate (I refrigerated it in my blender container so I could just pop it back on the blender base). Transfer to an ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer’s direction. Then transfer to an air tight container, press plastic wrap flush to the surface, and chill for several more hours, or until firm but not hard.

Makes 8 servings. Each serving has a total of 16g of carbs and 3.75g of fiber, but only 10g of carbs if you subtract erythritol. Total net carbs is 6.25g.

Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.

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