Isn’t it nice when one’s work-place provides ice-creams mid-afternoon because it’s too hot? Quite the nicest sort of work-surprise, excepting a healthy bonus.

We were given an ice-cream maker a few years ago – it’s sat in its box in the cupboard ever since – and with all this heat at the moment, I was inspired to pull it out and test a recipe in an Ice Cream and Sorbet recipe book. Admittedly I attempted a vegan ice at the weekend, with blueberries, coconut milk and bananas, but it was just a bit too bananary for me. So I riffled through the recipe book, and settled on chocolate sorbet.

I’m not a huge fan of commercial chocolate ice-creams – they’re all a bit chemically and not nearly chocolatey enough -but this recipe I recall being quite good. And I had some cacao chips to use up.

Ingredients:

125g chocolate, pref. at least 70% cacao

(I used 100g cacao chips – gonna be a rich chocolate sorbet)

500ml water

250g sugar

75g cocoa powder

(I used chocolate flakes – no cocoa powder in my cupboards!)

60ml creme de cacao

How to Make:

Bring to the boil the water, sugar and cocoa powder and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes to create a chocolate syrup.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate over a pan of boiling water and stir until smooth.

Stir the chocolate into the syrup and add the creme de cacao. Stir until smooth.

Allow to go cold before tipping into your ice cream maker/pouring into a tub and popping in the freezer. If not using the magic machine, remember to take it out every hour or so and give it a good stir.

Enjoy!