I was lingering over this recipe for concord grape sorbet and seriously thinking about making it. There’s a heaping basket of coronation (similar to concord) grapes in my fridge. The early crops are conveniently seedless and still have a bit of a tartness to them. The skins are a little bitter and sort of winey, while the grapes themselves are so undeniably grape-y, like the platonic ideal of grape-ness. I really, really love them.

So I wanted to make this sorbet into something special. Then I started thinking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my childhood lunchbox favourite hands down (on squishy, mysteriously dissolvable bread no less). The time to enjoy ice cream sandwiches is wrapping up so I thought I’d make some soft peanut butter cookies, lay the super grape-y sorbet in there and voila! Brilliantly new-fangled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Unlike my childhood lunchbox main of choice, this treat is a little healthy miracle. Whole grain flour (fibre!), natural peanut butter (protein!) and antioxidant packed sorbet (vitamins!) push this sammy a tiny bit closer to the breakfast column. I’ve always found peanut butter cookies a bit too heavy on their own, so the really fresh and slightly acidic sorbet cuts through the richness just right.

PB & J SORBET SANDWICHES
Print the recipe here!
Sorbet recipe from Raw Food Real World and cookie recipe adapted from Jae Steele’s Get it Ripe
SERVES: 12
NOTES: almond or sunflower seed butter would be so yummy in these cookies if you have a peanut allergy.

sorbet:
4 cups coronation or concord style grapes
1 cup filtered water
1 cup agave nectar

cookies:
1 cup whole spelt flour
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour (you could do all spelt or whole wheat pastry flour as well)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup natural peanut butter
1 cup maple syrup (or 1 1/4 cups brown sugar, you may have to add more oil if you go this way)
1/3 cup grape seed oil (or olive, sunflower etc)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Make the sorbet: Put all of the ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend/process until the skins are visibly finer or have disappeared. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve to remove pieces of grape skin, seeds etc.

Place grape mixture into an ice cream machine and follow manufacturer’s instructions or use the previously linked to method. Store in the freezer.

Make the cookies: preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk the flour, baking soda and sea salt in a large bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer) until combined. Mix in the peanut butter, maple syrup, oil and vanilla until the flour is just barely absorbed.

Drop the dough in heaping tablespoon portions onto parchment lined baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Flatten out with a dampened finger. Bake for 11 minutes, remove and allow to cool on the sheets for a bit. They will seem undercooked, but by the time they cool they’ll have firmed up. Besides, you’re kind of going for a more cakey texture if you’re applying it to the ice cream sandwich thing.

Make the pb and j sorbet sandwiches: set up a baking tray or large, flat tupperware dish with fresh parchment. Remove sorbet from freezer and allow it to soften up a bit. Place a teeny bit less than a standard ice cream scoop sized amount of sorbet on one cookie and smoosh it down with a spoon. Place another cookie on top. Repeat with remaining cookies and sorbet. Place finished sandwiches on baking sheet and freeze until they set up. remove from the freezer five minutes before serving.