Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Blackberries and Mint accompanied by Plum Sorbet

Here is my suggestion for the plums and peaches in your CSA basket next week. Although this looks like a lot of work, it was surprisingly easy. We had the amazing plums and peaches that Kate and Nick had found for us, blackberries that we picked from at Orchardside Farm, Kate's mint, and from Staunton's farmers' market, honey from the Honey man and fromage blanc from the cheese lady.

The shortcake recipe is based on Suzanne Goin's Cornmeal Shortcakes with Peaches, Mint, and Soured Cream. The shortcakes are very simple and quick. Since I have the link, I won't go into detail on it. But they were so easy and delicious. If you have a food processor, the shortcakes won't take you longer than 30 minutes to make. The challenge is to keep from eating them before finishing the dessert.

I added the freshly picked blackberries to the peaches and followed the recipe for adding the simple sugar syrup (I can imagine a number of combinations working here and look forward to seeing what other fruit Kate and Nick find for us this season). The recipe calls for pureeing a portion of the peaches, which I did before we added the blackberries.

For the soured cream, I brought mascarpone from DC, but not enough. So I added some fromage blanc that we found at the Farmers' Market and added syrup to sweeten and lemon to sour. This worked wonderfully. I can see going more local here and using different combinations of local fresh cheeses. This was a breeze and tasted like summer.

We could have stopped there, but my daughter Josie insisted that we make Plum Sorbet.

We dug out our ice cream maker, which someone gave to Don and I as a wedding present seventeen years ago and which we have never used! Since it made the trip to the farm, it only made sense to give it a try. This recipe is also from the Suzanne Goin, but I think it is the fruit that makes it so wonderful. I took about a pound of the plums, cored and pitted them (Josie was not a great deal of help here). I then added sugar (1/2 cup) and 2T of honey and let it sit for a while. Puree (keeping the skin on makes some wonderful flecks in the sorbet) and add some lemon juice to taste (a tablespoon or so) and leave in the fridge to chill. Then, we dusted off that ice cream maker (ours is a little Donvier) and Josie took charge of freezing. It didn't take long and, well, you can see the results for yourselves. It was pretty fabulous. So dig out those ice cream freezers and give it a whirl.