• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • recipes
  • drink
  • dining out

The Delicious Life logo

menu icon
go to homepage
  • recipes
  • drink
  • dining out
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
  • search icon
    Homepage link
    • recipes
    • drink
    • dining out
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
  • ×
    Home » recipes » sweets and desserts » Cantaloupe Melon Sorbet, the Best Way to Use Melon

    cooking

    Cantaloupe Melon Sorbet, the Best Way to Use Melon

    When I was little, we used to play "Just the Tip."

    Jump to Recipe
    cantaloupe honeydew watermelon cut on tabletop

    Now before you go retroactively running off to call County Child Services on my Delicious Jackson family, I am talking about watermelon tips.

    When I was little, we lived in Texas, and it just wasn’t summer if I warn’t (not a typo - that's how we said it) double fisting green and white watermelon rinds with juice dripping from my chin, staining the front of my Gloria Vanderbilt polo(-style) shirt, and running down my forearm from wrist to elbow in sticky pink rivulets.

    Ok. See, that actually never happened because I never ate entire slices of watermelon.

    I had a terrible/brilliant habit of stealing the watermelon tips. You know what those are? When Mom cut the watermelon into those handy little triangles and arranged them in neat little rows on a tray, I would skulk over to the table, break off all the tips, transforming perfect pink polka-seed-dotted isosceles triangles into trapezoids.

    Do not think that I did not actually call them "trapezoids." I was a child genius who knew the Rule of 72 at the age of six.

    The watermelon tips were the best part. They were the dead center of the watermelon, sweetest darkest pink, and never seemed to have any seeds in that two inch triangle. I think, however, that the tips just tasted that much better because it made everyone else so mad that I not only snapped them all off, but ran off with my mouth and fists full of all of them, laughing my tiny evil toddler head off.

    crenshaw-melon-seeds
    Watermelon is a group fruit, or the more poetic, alliterative "family fruit" — those fruits that are large enough to serve all of it in one sitting to a group. In my adult life, group fruits phased out of my diet. It just didn't make sense to buy an entire melon as a single person who lives alone, confining myself to an all melon diet for the three or fours days that it would last in the refrigerator. Watermelon, like the playful mischief it ignited in my childhood, was replaced by smart, single, seasonless "hand fruits."

    Like bananas.

    Looking back, though, group fruits were only the beginning of what turned out to be an almost complete replacement of all fresh fruit, betraying my sweet melonic past and my southern California present. On any given day of the week there are no fewer than five farmers markets set up around the greater Metropolitan Los Angeles area. I live less than three miles from one of the largest farmers' markets, and a mere three blocks from a small but respectable one, complete with petting zoo, in my neighborhood. Even if I didn't live in the Spot of Eternal Sunshine, technology and business have made it possible to have a red, ripe raspberry in the dead of winter. In Minneapolis.

    And yet last year, I sacrificed fresh fruit for "love."

    It wasn't a conscious decision, as if someone were holding a dull paring knife to my throat and forcing me to renounce all fresh fruit. He just told me, "Do not ever fucking bring fucking fresh fruit into this house again you filthy whore and by the way, yes, you do look fat in those jeans."

    Which is really my revisionist recollection of "I just don't eat fruit."

    Oh.

    It wasn't a point to argue, just a statement, but since half the fun of eating anything at all is sharing it with someone else, I replaced grapes, strawberries, Fuji apples with the canned pears, canned peaches, and fruity, fat-free, flavor-free frozen yogurt that he liked. Every once in a while, I indulged in mangoes - the dried ones he could buy at Costco.

    After the breakup followed by two cold, dark, dreary seasons, I experienced something of a fruit renaissance this past spring and summer. I wasn't afraid to buy blueberries just to eat straight from the basket. I tried to understand the appeal of peach fuzz. I remembered what it was like to squint and shiver from the sour skin of a plum, then sink into the sweetness of the flesh inside. I even learned how to eat fresh melon one day and turn the rest into sorbet.

    And with a strange sense of nostalgia, I watched my niece hover over a bowl of hulled strawberries, shove as many as she could into her mouth, then run off laughing, leaving her younger brother with an empty bowl, utterly bewildered.

    cantaloupe-sorbet
    cantaloupe honeydew watermelon cut on tabletop
    Print Recipe
    No ratings yet

    Charentais Melon (Cantaloupe) Sorbet Recipe

    from Bouchon cookbook by Thomas Keller
    Prep Time5 minutes mins
    12 hours hrs
    Total Time12 hours hrs 5 minutes mins
    Course: Dessert
    Cuisine: American, French
    Keyword: ice cream/sorbet

    Ingredients

    • 2½ pounds cleaned ripe Charentais melon or other melon peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks (about 4 cups)
    • ½ cup sugar

    Instructions

    • Place the cut melon on a paper towel-lined tray and let sit for 12 hours in the refrigerator to drain excess moisture.
    • Combine the melon and sugar in blender and blend to a puree.
    • Transfer to an ice cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
    when you make this recipe, let us know!Mention @TheDelicious or tag #thedeliciousmademedoit!

    More Cantaloupe Melon Sorbet Recipes

    • David Lebovitz's recipe  includes wine!
    • Dawn's Recipes only uses 3 ingredients: cantaloupe, lime juice, and honey
    • Very basic with cantaloupe and simple syrup from Southern Living Magazine
    • Bon Appetit uses dessert wine and sugar, with a recipe for accompanying compote
    • Cook with Mary adds peppermint and vodka
    • Better Homes and Gardens adds orange zest and juice
    • Just melon and syrup by Jenni Britton at Food & Wine

    More sweets and desserts

    • carrot cake, whole cake sliced on white cake plate
      Carrot Cake, Double the Flavor in an Easy Single Layer
    • chocolate cake with sprinkles
      Eggless Chocolate Cake, the Best Recipe for this Economy
    • pumpkin olive oil cake
      Pumpkin Olive Oil Cake, Fast and Easy
    • dessert charcuterie board
      Dessert Charcuterie Board, How to Make it Epic with Low Effort

    Sharing is caring!

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Yutjangsah says

      November 17, 2009 at 6:23 pm

      Your memories are like mine. Only much better written.

      Reply
    2. djjewelz says

      November 17, 2009 at 6:26 pm

      you were THAT KID! Did you also take bites of donuts, cookies, snap the head off of animal crackers and put them back on the tray? Wait, you don't eat donuts, cookies and animal crackers, nevermind.

      Reply
    3. Sarah J. Gim says

      November 17, 2009 at 6:48 pm

      Yutjangsah: we had horrible childhoods, didn't we?

      djjewelz: none of those, and in fact, I quite dislike the Half-Doughnut Bandito who seems to attack every office I've ever worked in. However, I have been known to taken a bite out of every single chocolate in those mixed boxes from See's or Godiva.

      Reply
      • djjewelz says

        November 18, 2009 at 5:28 pm

        my korean sister from another mother does that too. 20+ pieces all with little bites. I'm sure her daughter will do the same once she grows up.

        Reply
    4. Mr. P says

      November 18, 2009 at 2:01 am

      I just found your blog by chance... And you have made me laugh out loud.

      I steal melon tips too. Only I'm twenty seven. I don't think anybody minds when children do it! :)

      Reply
    5. Sarah J. Gim says

      November 18, 2009 at 11:03 am

      mr p.: it's time for me to come clean. i still do it, too :D

      Reply
    6. sara says

      December 31, 2009 at 4:08 pm

      Mmmm, this sorbet looks divine! I definitely know what you mean about rediscovering things after a break-up...not fruit in my case, but it can be surprising the things one is willing to do without to appease a partner! I need to be more conscious of that next time. ;)

      Reply
    7. Sarah J. Gim says

      January 02, 2010 at 2:25 am

      sara: willing to do without...or do. sometimes, when I reflect on my past relationships, I am shocked at the things I would bend over backwards to do for a guy!

      Reply
    8. Albert einstien says

      June 18, 2014 at 9:29 pm

      snow ice machine
      Awesome!
      Immense information there.

      Reply

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Recipe Rating




    Primary Sidebar

    Copyright © 2025 · The Delicious Life · Privacy Policy ·