Dragonfruit sorbet is a delightfully refreshing tropical dessert that is sure to impress friends and family. This recipe involves a little bit of science, but nothing you can’t find online.

dragonfruit sorbet with fresh fruit garnish, whole dragonfruits and lime wedges

This recipe for dragonfruit sorbet follows my base recipe for general sorbets so once you get the science-y ingredients you can use them over and over again for plenty of different flavors.

While I love ice cream and gelato, there’s something just refreshingly delightful about sorbets in summer that make me happy. And using tropical fruits like dragonfruit transports you right back to the hot and humid beaches of Thailand, eating freshly cut fruit from a street vendor and yearning for a dip in the clear waters off the beach (assuming you’ve experienced this before – otherwise you have no idea what I’m talking about).

What You’ll Need

As with all of my recipes on Scoops of Delight, you need an ice cream machine. The exact style and brand does not matter too much but you do want one that is decent quality. I personally use the Smeg Ice Cream Maker. The only issue with it is that you need to already have a Smeg Stand Mixer – which can be quite pricey. While there are plenty of recipes for no-churn sorbets, I often find a properly churned sorbet magnitudes better.

Some other things you will need for this homemade sorbet recipe are:

Mixing Bowls
Wire Whisk
Steel Pan (I personally find steel the best for making sorbet, but you can use any as long as you are careful about the temperature.
Rubber Spatula
Sealable Container (The best thing to use to store homemade sorbet is plastic in my opinion. You want something that is more flat than tall as it provides more surface area to quickly freeze in a home freezer).
Fine Mesh Sieve
Blender (I use a stick blender, but you can use a juicer or regular blender as well)
Kitchen Scale (optional, but recommended as almost all of my recipes use metric as it is more precise than imperial for most home cooks).

How To Make Homemade Dragonfruit Sorbet

dragonfruit sorbet ingredients laid out on a countertop next to a kitchen scale

These ingredients are easy to find online, but there are brick and mortar specialty shops that will likely have them as well. For fruit sorbets I actually buy puree frozen and just keep it in my freezer until ready to use. Why? Because fruits used for puree are picked at peak ripeness and processed so they are much more flavorful than fruits picked underripe and sent to grocery stores.

Of course, I still did buy a dragonfruit to dice up for garnish – otherwise how would I take a nice photo for this blog!

Now, I will explain what the chemically-sounding ingredients do down below just so you are aware why I use some ingredients people may be ‘put-off’ by.

Ingredients

500 grams Dragonfruit Puree – You can make this yourself from fresh dragonfruit, or as mentioned above buy it already pureed and frozen. I prefer the latter. I use red dragonfruit for the rich color, but you can use white or yellow if it is easier to find.
75 grams Sucrose – This is standard sugar, which adds sweetness and lowers the freezing temperature of the sorbet.
40 grams Dextrose – This is a type of sugar which is less sweet than than sucrose but has a greater capability to lower the freezing temperature, keeping the final sorbet nice and scoopable. I like to use a mix of sucrose and dextrose so the sweetness and meltability is better balanced.
1 gram CMC – aka ‘carbomethylcellulose‘ which acts as a stabilizer and keeps the finished sorbet nice and smooth. Homemade sorbets are known to get ‘icy’ and using an ingredient like CMC is a great way to prevent most crystals while retaining a creamy, velvety mouthfeel.
1 grams Guar Gum – An emulsifier with stabilizing properties that raises the melting point of the sorbet and enhances scoop ability and mouthfeel. Now, isn’t raising the melting point and lowering the freezing point (sucrose and dextrose) the same thing? Yes, which is why we use all of these ingredients together to achieve a perfect balance.
2 tbsp Lime Juice – An acid is used to enhance the flavor of fruits with low acidity. Plus lime-dragonfruit is a great flavor combination and does shine in the finished sorbet
1 tsp Titanium Dioxide – While this ingredient does not do anything for the flavor or texture, it is a great way to enhance the color of the sorbet. Titanium dioxide is most often used to make whites whiter (like in mass produced vanilla ice cream) however when used with a color such as red dragonfruit it prevents the color from getting ‘washed-out’ during churning. Most often seen with ice cream, colors can become dull as you pump in air, so titanium dioxide is great at combating that.

Instructions

dragonfruit sorbet wet ingredients and dry ingredients in two separate steel bowls

To begin making this dragonfruit sorbet recipe you will need two mixing bowls; one for wet and one for dry. I suggest mixing the wets and dry separately as things like guar and cmc can clump if added directly to liquid by themselves, creating a goopy texture.

Once you have mixed the wets in one bowl and the dry in another you can mix them together. I start by adding the dry to the wet and whisking to combine, then I move everything over to a graduated cylinder type vessel and blend with an immersion blender until fully combined. This will help the sugar dissolve into the liquids.

Place the mixture in the fridge to chill for a couple hours.

When ready to churn add the sorbet base to your ice cream machine and let run. I aim for about 50% overrun (increase in volume) but it is not too finnicky. Just stop churning when it looks like you have a smooth, creamy mix.

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