Hawaii-Style Sherbet

For people who shy away from unnatural ingredients, try making strawberry soda from real strawberries and sugar and then adding sparkling water. To make the strawberries, hull and halve 1 1/2 pounds strawberries. Toss with about 3/4 cups of sugar in a metal bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Place over a bowl of simmering water and leave for 30 - 45 minutes. Remove from heat and when cool, strain the juice. Or puree the whole thing. Add sparkling water to taste.

This was a fun read, nostalgically recalling other summertime treats. I remember making, in high school, a dessert called ‘Frozen Passion’ - one large bottle of orange soda and one can of sweetened condensed milk, hand cranked in an old-fashioned ice cream freezer (the only kind available, in my day). Was this concoction overly sweet, artificially colored, nutritionally dubious? Of course. Was it also delicious, easy, fun, memorable? You betcha…..

I remember that crack seed store well, and will be sure to make this ono recipe this summer, dusting it off with the stash of li hing mui powder my ohana from Hawaii sends me. If you don't understand the flavors from the islands you are truly missing out. Mahalo plenty for this gem.

Delighted to see this recipe! I was introduced to Neale by a friend of mine and just talked to him the other day. Growing up in Hawaii, I remember friends visiting Maui would bring back Tasaka Guri Guri to their friends on Oahu. The world has gotten much smaller, so things from Maui are less of a novelty for Oahuans, but the memories remain! Thanks Ligaya for finding these interesting treats and thanks Neale for allowing us to access something from our childhood, but with a modern twist.

I am enthused. Is there such a thing as natural strawberry soda and natural gelatin ie without artificial ingredients. I look forward to making this, if so.

Is there any reason not to just use a natural fruit juice? Does the carbonation do something important here?

This is based on the ice cream from Tasaka Guri Guri in the old Kahalui Mall on Maui. My mother-in-law grew up there and knew the family who owned it. When I was fortunate enough to visit, she would ask, "who wants 'Goody Goody." They used to serve their goody-goody with sweet red beans, but stopped. She scolded them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasaka_Guri-Guri#:~:text=Guri%2Dguri%20is%20a%20cross,a%20family%20secret%20for%20decades.

My grandmother in Alabama made this recipe. The favorite was strawberry. But she also did cream soda/vanilla and Grapico. It's interesting how far and wide this recipe spread. I make it when we go to the lake. I have some leftover Grapico ice cream in the freezer at the lake I think.

My mother used to make something like this for us when we were very young and sick. We called it Crello (Ice cream-Jello) and she did the final step in the blender. We did NOT live in Hawaii, but rather Minnesota. She’d make different flavors and I believe it mixed vanilla ice cream and Jello as the main ingredients. Fluffy, creamy. Crello was the best part of being sick!

. . . wondering if Japanese umeboshi plums might be a decent substitution for li hing mui plums . . .

I want to try this but am vegetarian and my husband is vegan. I’m wondering if agar will work instead of gelatin. Has anyone tried it? Might try it with agar and condensed coconut milk and possibly a different soda (thinking orange soda would taste like a creamsicle—yum

@ Marsha Gibson Umeboshi and Li Hing Mui are as different as Chinese from Japanese. They are not the same thing. I'm curious about the aversion to "artificial" ingredients. Unless you make everything from scratch, almost everything you get at a supermarket is an industrial product packed with chemicals. It's the only way to feed billions of people.

Yes, this recipe works in an ice cream maker. I followed the recipe through Step 5, then used an ice cream maker to finish it. The sherbet came out light and creamy. This recipe made two batches of sherbet in the ice cream maker.

This was a fail for me. Sherbet ended up way too icy, like shave ice. Not for us.

Can this be made ahead an frozen?