Egg Custard Sorbet

Not quite ready for prime time.

For the past several weeks, Isaiah has been after me for some Egg Custard flavoring. For those of you unfamiliar with Egg Custard, it's the number one shave ice / snowball syrup in Baltimore. It's so popular, it outsells the next most popular flavor (cherry) three to one.

I've still got some of the Egg Custard flavoring lying around so I brought him a bottle. When it comes to flavorings, a little goes a long way and after working up a sorbet formulation, it was time to give it a whirl. The notion of adults tasting a sorbet from their childhood, now that's the kind of stuff we're interested in.

The results were decent. Sweet, rich and with that comforting flavor of vanilla and caramel, but with the slightly disconcerting bright orange color. The flavor was correct but it lay a bit flat on the tongue. It needed something. It needed just a bit of citric acid to make it pop.

But the problem with this iteration of the Egg Custard Sorbet isn't the lack of acidity, it was its' origins: It's completely artificial. This fact alone makes it ineligible for the dessert menu at Woodberry Kitchen and The Spro. But I think we'll revisit the formulation of the sorbet with natural ingredients in the near future because, afterall, summer is just around the corner.