Easy 4-Ingredient Strawberry Key Lime Sorbet

Strawberry key lime sorbet is the perfect treat to close out a warm summer evening. With just 4 ingredients, you’ll fall in love with the ease of this no churn recipe!

Making a sorbet at home may seem a bit scary. But it’s one of the easiest homemade desserts that can be made! Just a few ingredients and a couple of hours for freezing is all you need!

How to make homemade sorbet

To make a simple sorbet base at home, all you’ll need is a blender, a freezer safe container, and fruit! No ice cream machine needed. Just blend, freeze, scoop, and serve!

For this particular recipe, there are additional ingredients to jazz up the strawberry sorbet base. The addition of an acid, key lime juice in this case, brightens up the flavor. Honey is a natural sweetener, which will help if you’re using strawberries outside of strawberry season. Lastly, the ginger adds a very slight spice kick that isn’t overwhelming (I love using Gourmet Garden’s ginger paste!)

Honey vs simple syrup for sorbet

Sorbet is commonly made with a simple syrup – equal parts of sugar and water simmered together and cooled. 

While it’s delicious, it’s better to use the simple syrup method for a sorbet that will be used in an ice cream maker. The churning helps to make the sorbet base smoother, which is important for the liquid content being added.

Since this strawberry key lime sorbet is a no churn recipe, I used honey! Not only is it a natural sweetener, the water content is much lower so the churning isn’t necessary!

Sorbet storage

The homemade sorbet should be stored in a freezer safe container with an airtight container.

It’s shelf life is around a month. Ice crystals will start to form on top of the sorbet, but can be lightly scraped off before serving.

Frozen fruit vs fresh fruit for sorbet

This strawberry key lime sorbet recipe calls for fresh strawberries. However if you can not get your hand on any, frozen is a great alternative. 

When the ingredients are blended together using frozen fruit, the end result will be more of a frozen slushy than a puree when using fresh fruit. Don’t worry though….it will still be delicious! Proceed with pouring the slushy into the freezer-safe container, and spread evenly before freezing for about an hour.

How to serve homemade sorbet

Once the sorbet is frozen, sit the container out at room temperature for about 5 minutes. The sorbet will be a bit easier to scoop this way. 

If you want to be fake fancy, slice up some fresh fruit to serve on the side of the scooped sorbet!

What I love is that sorbet can also be served as a drink! Scoop the frozen sorbet into a blender, and pulse until smooth. Make it an adult beverage by  adding a shot (or 2) of your favorite alcohol while blending. Or pour your favorite wine or hard seltzer over a scoop of sorbet in cups. Perfect summer treat!

If you’re looking for another easy dessert, you’ll definitely want to check out my no churn ice cream flavors: Cookie Butter, Cereal Milk, and S’mores!