I’ve always wondered how “Blue Raspberry” became a flavor of candies and desserts. Was there a blue raspberry plant? I was familiar with black raspberries (different species from blackberries, sometimes called “black caps” in some areas of the U.S.) but I didn’t know of a blue raspberry plant. Turns out, black raspberries are blue raspberries. Not that it is really relevant anymore since blue raspberries flavor is predominantly made by food coloring these days.

Sadly, I don’t have access to black raspberries or blue raspberries, whatever you want to call them. But I do have a ton of blueberries in my freezer and raspberries, too. So, I decided to make them into a blue raspberry sorbet.

This recipe has an additional, healthy, twist: replacing white sugar with agave nectar. Agave nectar is great stuff, but it is expensive, so I’ve included information for making this without it, as well.

The sorbet turned out to be nicely blue and red. My friends really enjoyed trying to guess what kinds of berries I had used.

Blue Raspberry Sorbet
(Makes 1 quart of sorbet)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of water (increase to 1 ¼ cups if using sugar)
  • 1/2 cup agave nectar (Or 2/3rd a cup of sugar)
  • 3 cups of berries (Approx. 1 ½ cups each of raspberries and blueberries)

Directions

  1. Puree raspberries and blueberries separately, keeping them from mixing.
  2. In a large measuring cup, mix agave nectar (or sugar) and water, stir to combine.
  3. Pour agave(or sugar)-water mixture in with the raspberries and puree further to thoroughly mix them.
  4. Churn raspberry mixture in your ice cream machine. At about 15-20 minutes (depending on your ice cream machine) the sorbet will become mostly firm and mixed.
  5. At this point, pour in the pureed blueberries, slowly. This will create blueberry swirls evenly distributed throughout the sorbet. It is tricky to make it look like a fancy swirl as in store-bought ice cream but it still looks fun. And tastes fantastic.