I'm happy to report that I recently landed my first freelance editorial job since we moved to Florida, and it promises to be an ongoing, many-months-long gig. I'm still in the onboarding1 and training stage, but I'm very excited to be working with this first corporate client.
With my husband Tony's help, I've created a Florida limited liability company that will be the entity through which I'll offer my editorial services to this and future clients. Its name isn't terribly clever: Bill Hawley Editorial Services LLC. I had considered some more-interesting names but ultimately went with one that included my own name because I already owned this domain with billhawley in it. I plan to add a landing page here that describes my business in the next day or so.
I considered calling my company either Big Hyphen or Huge Hyphen or Golden Hypen Editorial Services because I always used to joke at my previous full-time gig that what I mostly did was insert and—only occasionally—remove hyphens. That was far from the truth, but I would nonetheless make that joke because, well, I was actually quite proud of my ability to hyphenate and I'm a self-deprecating kind of guy. The first two options would also have been homages to Huge Hound Frozen Desserts LLC, the sweet-frozen-treat company I successfully started up in New Jersey last year, before we decided to give subtropical living a whirl.
I also pondered calling my business Punctual Punctuation LLC, because I love alliteration, but Tony said it could seem like all I was capable of doing was correctly—and quickly—punctuating copy. "I'm sorry. I can't find misspellings or subject-verb disagreement. But I moved that comma from there to here." Much like the names with Hyphen in them, it also seemed too self-parodying. And I really should be serious about my editorial skills, because they're seriously good. And so, Bill Hawley Editorial Services it is.
I made my first batch of Chocolate-Blackberry Sorbet (which I previously wrote on this blog may be my favorite frozen dessert ever) in a little over a year last week. The previous occasion was the production week for Huge Hound in which I made both that sorbet and Beet-Nutmeg Ice Cream.
This batch turned out nicely, though it wasn't as high in quality as other iterations of this sorbet I've made. The biggest issue was that I used mostly frozen blackberries supplemented with a couple ounces of nonfrozen ones that had been shipped to Florida from California, and neither of those sources of berries was going to compare with fresh-picked fruit from a local farm like I could easily get in Hunterdon County and New York City.
For part of the chocolate component, I used dark chocolate morsels from Enjoy Life, the allergen-free-food producer I mentioned in my blondie recipe post. I utilized Enjoy Life chocolates in my Huge Hound desserts because they never contain even a trace of the most common allergens, including dairy, and that's terribly important to people who have severe health reactions to cows' milk or who avoid all animal-derived food products on moral grounds.
Although Tony can't eat dairy in any significant quantity, his body is able to handle the trace amounts that might have been left behind as a contaminant when a production line was switched from milk chocolate to a dark or semisweet chocolate. That means I can buy brands whose labels indicate they were made on equipment that also produces milk chocolate but not items containing gluten.
Which brings me to Guittard, maker of the finest brand of chocolate chips that's pretty widely available in grocery stores and that Tony and I generally eat straight from the bag, though I do occasionally bake them into cookies. We hadn't been able to find Guittard chips locally since we moved here, and we were leery of having them shipped to us given the Florida-summer heat we're still experiencing.
On Thursday, I was thrilled to find two kinds of Guittard chocolate chips at the new Lucky's Market in Oakland Park that's a short drive from our apartment complex. I texted Tony a photo of the chips with the exclamation "Squee!" Lucky's didn't have our two absolute favorite kinds of Guittard chips—the Akoma Semisweet Chocolate Chips in the pink bag or the Super Cookie Chips in the bright-yellow bag—but I will cajole the grocery manager to please start offering them.
Anyhow, back to the sorbet, the majority of whose chocolate flavor actually comes from cocoa powder. I used Guittard-brand cocoa Tony had bought a while ago from Atlantic Spice Co., and I nearly plotzed just now when I saw the gluten warning on that linked page. Tony assures me he spoke with someone at Atlantic, a company that takes allergen issues very seriously, before making this purchase and was convinced the cocoa is perfectly safe for him. 👍
You might say the secret ingredient in this sorbet is water ...
... because the first step in making the chocolate component is to boil cocoa and sugar in water.
Tony said he liked the hint of earthiness the brown rice syrup I'd used as an additional sweetener lent to the sorbet.
I adapted my recipe from two that appeared in my trusty copy of Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library: Ice Creams & Sorbets: Crimson Plum–Raspberry Sorbet and Rich Chocolate-Orange Sorbet. I basically made a fruit sorbet base and a chocolate sorbet base, combined them in a single pot, chilled the resulting purplish-brown mixture, and processed it in my ice cream maker. Because the fruit sorbet recipe produces a little more than a quart of finished product and the chocolate sorbet a little more than half a quart, I ended up with more than 1 1/2 times the volume of a typical sorbet base and so had to churn it in two batches. I considered trying to combine the two recipes into one by, say, adding the blackberries to the boiled cocoa mixture, but I didn't. Maybe next time.
Chocolate-Blackberry Sorbet
Makes almost 2 quarts.
1 3/4 cup sugar, divided
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (preferably Guittard)
1 1/2 cups + 2/3 cup water
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (preferably Guittard) or coarsely chopped pieces from a bittersweet chocolate bar
4 tablespoons brown rice syrup, divided
2 pounds blackberries, fresh or thawed frozen
In a medium saucepan, combine 3/4 cup sugar and the cocoa. Gradually whisk in 1 1/2 cups water. Place over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, whisking constantly, about 4 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the chocolate and 2 tablespoons brown rice syrup, and whisk until combined. Pour into a large pot and set aside.
In a clean medium saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar, 2/3 cup water, and 2 tablespoons brown rice syrup. Cook on high, stirring constantly until the sugar and syrup are dissolved into the water. Bring to a boil and then remove from the heat.
In a blender or food processor, purée the blackberries until smooth. Strain into the saucepan, pressing firmly on the solids with a rubber spatula. Discard the remaining solids. Stir the berries and syrup together. Then transfer the berry sorbet base to the large pot. Stir to thoroughly combine the chocolate and berry bases. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour.
Process the base in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions, working in two batches if necessary. Transfer the sorbet to a container and freeze for at least 4 hours before serving.
1I usually am turned off by business-speak like onboarding. But for some reason, I like that word.