Clementine ice cream

Question

I made this clementine cake a while back, and very much appreciated the fact that it uses the entire fruit. I found a good deal on clementines today, and was thinking of trying to do something similar with ice cream or sherbet or even sorbet!

I'm fairly confident with sorbets - some sugar, water until it's the right consistency, and you're just about done. I'm not so sure about an ice cream, though; I know acid and milk can cause problems, and the high water content of boiled pureed clementines sounds like it could turn creamy to icy.

I don't want to directly ask for a recipe or anything - not that I expect there to be any use-the-whole-orange recipes out there anyway - but I would love some advice about starting points. What kind of recipe would you use as a base for a clementine ice cream or sherbet, using the whole fruit? Or am I over-worrying, and I can just swap orange juice/zest for clementines in an orange sherbet recipe, or add clementines to a plain ice cream base, and get away with it with minimal modification?

Answer

I would probably go the sherbet route. I think it would be more forgiving for you with the juice. You don't really see that much citrus ice cream. I think the juice coming from it would just be icy as you said.

Also, you could probably use the zest just fine, but I don't think the rest of the peel will work well.

I would start off by looking at an orange sherbet recipe and go from there.

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