Honeysuckle popsicles

Honeysuckle Sorbet was made famous (and probably invented) by the late Bill Neal, of Crooks Corner restaurant in Chapel Hill. It takes a lot of honeysuckle flowers, but it is incredible. The only problem is that if you don't serve it all in the first two days, it solidifies and becomes hard to eat with a spoon. It's not ice cube hard, but more like a popsicle.

So last time I made it, I scooped the sorbet (with an ice cream scoop) onto a sheet pan lined with parchment and stuck sticks into the lumps of sorbet. The hardest part of that whole endeavor was finding room for a sheet pan in the freezer, but I did. By that night, we had honeysuckle popsicles.

Here is the Bill Neal's recipe. He said that it cannot be cut in half. SInce my ice cream maker only does a quart, I make the whole recipe, but freeze half for later use.

Honeysuckle Sorbet

2 quarts

4 cups (tightly packed but not smashed) honeysuckle flowers, leaves and stems discarded

5 1/3 cups cool water

1 1/3 cups water

2 cups sugar

Few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice

Speck of cinnamon

Place the flowers in a nonreactive container (glass or stainless steel) and cover with the cool water. Weight down with a plate. Let stand on the counter overnight.

In a small saucepan, make a syrup out of the sugar and the water by boiling it until all the sugar is dissolved and it begins to look lustrous and slightly thick, 3-5 minutes. Add a few drops of lemon juice to prevent the sugar from recrystallizing. Cool the syrup completely. Strain the honeysuckle infusion, gently pressing the blossoms so as not to waste any of your previous efforts. Combine the two liquids and add the merest dusting of cinnamon. You don't want to taste it, but you can tell if it's not there. I use the tip of a sharp boning knife to measure it. Churn in an ice-cream maker. This does not keep for more than a week or two.