Transform Cantaloupe Into Sherbet With One Ingredient And 3 Minutes

To make a smooth ice cream-like dessert at home, all you need is frozen cantaloupe, a can of good coconut milk, and about three minutes to spare. This trick is going viral for good reason — it couldn't be easier to implement and it yields an incredibly tasty result. To make this quick sherbet, it's essential that the cantaloupe is frozen first. So, cut a ripe cantaloupe in half, remove seeds, and scoop out a little bit of flesh to create a small divot in the center. You'll then throw the entire half in the freezer. 

Once frozen solid, pour some coconut milk in that divot. Now here's the trick: scrape the sides with a spoon and mix the liquid with the frozen fruit shavings until it all becomes creamy. Add small amounts of milk at a time and keep scraping the fruit until you get a fluffy mixture which you can scoop out and eat. You can repeat this process, adding more coconut milk to each layer of frozen cantaloupe until you've utilized the whole fruit. 

You can also use store-bought frozen cantaloupe. However, this will entail a slightly different method since you'll likely have chopped-up pieces of fruit rather than a frozen half to work with. In this case, you'll need to blend the fruit with the milk (about four cups of cantaloupe with one cup of coconut milk). Add more splashes of coconut milk if the blender struggles to churn, but don't pour too much as that will make the final result thin. Before you opt to add more milk, it may be better to pause the blender, scrape down the sides, and let the fruit soften for a couple of minutes first.

The same easy scraping method (or blending, if that's what you've gone for) can be applied to a lot of other frozen fruit, the only caveat being that the texture may be affected by the fruit's water content. You can freeze watermelon and use that to make some sherbet as well, or opt for pineapple. Mangoes, peaches, and nectarines all work too; they may all just be a tiny bit harder to hold as you scrape due to their smaller size, but they are excellent for a single-serve dessert.

Full-fat coconut milk is a natural fit because of its tropical flavor and the fact that it is very rich, which works to soften the icy texture of the fruit without overpowering its taste, but other liquids can be used too. If you eat dairy, you can use heavy cream or Greek yogurt, both of which will give a thick and creamy result. Using a plant-based milk alternative, however, may yield less success because it's naturally a lot more water-based, and so you may end up with a much icier dessert — one that resembles shaved ice or granita rather than a creamy ice-cream or sherbet dupe. It can still be delicious if that's more your thing.