There is always room for dessert if you serve sorbet. Creamy pumpkin sorbet with cinnamon and nutmeg has all the elements of pumpkin pie and is pareve. I love Thanksgiving and like to keep it real with all of my food. No need to make pumpkin pie with non-dairy whipped topping when you can have the bright orange and delicious sorbet.

2 ¼ cups water (bottled water makes a tastier sorbet)

½ cup sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

3 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon ginger powder

1 vanilla bean, scraped*

1. Place water and sugars in a medium saucepan and cook over low heat until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Remove from heat and add pumpkin puree, spices and vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

3. Cool completely then add to your ice cream machine and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Store the sorbet covered in the freezer. If the sorbet begins to separate after about 5 days, simply melt it and re-process it in your machine.

*A whole vanilla bean is actually a pod. Inside the pod are thousands of tiny black seeds. Vanilla beans are richly perfumed with the exotic fragrance and flavor of vanilla. For some recipes, I would rather use a vanilla bean because you just get more pure vanilla flavor. I also like the look of the tiny black seeds in ice cream, custards and this sorbet. The pure essence is intoxicating. A bonus tip is that vanilla beans are kosher all year long and during Pesach. No need to use inferior quality extracts during Pesach. Go for the good stuff! I prefer Tahitian vanilla beans as they possess an exotic floral fragrance. Some other great vanilla beans come from Madagascar.

To use a vanilla bean: cut the bean in half lengthwise. Scrape the back of your knife along the cut side of the bean. You will have scraped up the seeds and the reddish gooey essence. Save the scraped bean (you did pay for it!) and bury it in your sugar container so all of your baking sugar will smell of vanilla or put it in a bottle of plain vodka and your vodka will have a vanilla essence for your cocktails.

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