Only place I've seen it is at a local Middle Eastern store. Fresh and as a jarred 'juice'.

Thanks but no ME stores here either so I guess I'll skip this recipe.

Just use spinach instead, and a dash of lemon juice to give that 'sorrel' flavour.

You can grow sorrel in the garden, but it is a spring green, so you are not likely to find it in the stores now. Sorrel grows wild in many places in the US, you can find it in your lawn and garden all the time, maybe even growing out of that crack in the pavement out back, but you have to know what you are looking for. Another name for wild sorrel is "sheep sorrel" or "sour grass." There are actually two kinds of wild sorrel and they are not related. Sorrel soup was a popular peasant food, folks went out and foraged for it and were happy to have some fresh greens after a long winter.

Spinach, chard or escarole with lemon are common sorrel subs.

Sheep Sorrel

There are lots of sorrels, but these are two of the most common ones you can find as weeds. There are other kinds with more lush leaves you can grow in the garden and maybe find in a few gourmet greengrocers places, but I imagine they would be few and far between. I've only seen it maybe once or twice, usually is some special novelty marketing item--gourment greens and all that.

I posted that last whole link by mistake. It should just be a link to the words "Wood Sorrel" not the whole paragraph!

Do you think spinach would work in this recipe linked below. It's the one for Lemon Cupcakes with Bitters, Sorrel, and Toasted Meringue. (Scroll down).

Here is a link that might be useful: cupcake blog link

Definately not!! You'll end up with green cupcakes!
I'm most familiar with schav, a sorrel soup, in which spinach and lemon is often subbed for sorrel.

In those cupcakes, the sorrel is just a gourmet fru fru thing IMHO. Fine if you've got a bunch of sorrel and want to mess with it, but I can't imagine the taste of sorrel being extremely distinct and signature. I'd experiment with grapefruit and grapefruit peel. Or wait until spring and gather a bunch of sorrel out of my yard. It is an extremely common weed in my garden. Don't confuse sorrel with clover. Research it some on the Web and make sure you can identify it. In the spring, if you can find some, give it a little taste test and see if it has a distinctive lemony taste. If not, you've got clover, which is not toxic but tastes like grass. Sorrel is a yellow green, unlike clover which is more of an emerald green.

The other kind of sorrel (sheep sorrel) has leaves shaped a little bit like the point of a lance. That is common too.

I have French sorrel and bloody sorrel growing in my garden right now. The French sorrel is the one that has the lance shaped leaves. I add it to my salads, and I have a recipe for lentil and sorrel soup I have yet to try. I wouldn't have thought of using it in cupcakes.

Sally

Ok, thanks lpinkmountain. I haven't ever even heard of sorrel before but now know it has a lemony taste. I will definitely try find it in the spring.

Today, instead of those cupcakes, I plan on making mini samoas cupcakes instead. The kids for sure will prefer them to the others LOL

Here is a link that might be useful: samoas cupcakes

That cupcake recipe would work with any syrup--blood orange, Meyer lemon, whatever's tart.