Photos By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Sorbetto from La Gelateria Italian Frozen Desserts
is served in frozen fruit shells, from left: lemon, mango,
orange and watermelon.

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From your favorite fruit
to your favorite flower, try it frozen

By Malia Rulon
Star-Bulletin

It's smack in the middle of the summertime heat-fest, you've got your fan turned on to extra high, and all you can think of is how much you'd love to dig into a cold gallon tub of ice cream. Forget it!

Are you seriously thinking about sacrificing the body you've been working for ever since your sinful Thanksgiving splurge -- for one blissful second of frozen-fat frenzy?

Enter frozen fruit, fruit smoothies and sherbet. These natural alternatives to ice cream have been around since the 1300s, according to Piero Sarale, chef at La Gelateria Italian Frozen Desserts, at 819 Cedar St.

The earliest record of ice cream comes from the Biblical days of Abraham and Isaac, when the elder herdsman was served goat milk and snow, Sarale said. But ice cream and sherbet as we know it, traces back 600 years ago to a European favorite that mixed crushed ice with fruit pulps to make delicious frozen deserts.

In Italy, sorbetto, or sherbet, was made year-round with snow from the Mt. Vesuvius. These early frozen-fruit entrepreneurs used ice and salt to make their frosty confections.

But the word "sherbet," actually comes from the Arabian words "scherbet," which means "sweet snow" and "sharber," or "to sip," Sarale said.

Now, hundreds of years later, La Gelateria offers hundreds of sorbetto flavors -- coconut, honey, grapefruit, champagne, kiwi, carrot, thyme, lilikoi, soursap, rose blossom and pikake, just to name a few.

"Anything you want can be done as a sorbetto," Sarale said, "anything from vegetables to flowers to wine to spirits, beer."

Errol Aczion, owner of Caffe Aczione, at 1684 Kalakaua Ave., is sold on La Gelateria's creations. He's been serving refilled fruit sorbetto in his cafe ever since he opened 3-1/2 years ago.

Photos By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Piero Sarale, chef at La Gelateria, says just about anything,
including vegetables and even beer, can be
made into a frozen confection.

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"I serve what I like," Aczion said. "My favorites are lilikoi and mango, so that's what we're serving right now. It's very popular."

These unique desserts are made using the pulp and juices from the real fruit to make sorbetto that is then refilled into the original fruit rinds.

"I don't actually like sorbets," Aczion said. "But I like these because they taste like you are eating the real fruit ... the mango sorbet really tastes like you're biting into a mango."

Sarale said he's not surprised. Flavors like mango, lychee and soursap are in top demand during the summer months because sorbetto is made all-natural and is refreshing.

"People are going for sorbet three times more than ice cream," he said. "The texture has a feel like ice cream, but it's healthier, and that's what people are looking for."

David Leong of Dave's Hawaiian Ice Cream agrees that people are looking for healthy alternatives, but maintained that their love of natural Hawaiian flavors is stronger than their preoccupation with dieting.

Still, his stores offer a selection of both local ice cream and sherbets. In addition, they offer chocolate-covered bananas, strawberries and cherries.

"We used to make frozen bananas when we were kids," Leong said. "Now, the general public loves it."

Leong's chain of Hawaiian ice cream stores has been serving up unique island flavors since 1982. Favorites include kulolu, a combination of taro and coconut; ube, a Phillipine potato or purple yam; mango; lychee; and green tea.