Lemon Sorbet

Now I’ve got the basics sorted out, time to move on to the next baby step with the ice cream machine, a straightforward not messing around too much with the recipe Lemon Sorbet. The vanilla ice cream churned and set from chilled within half an hour, so this should be just the same, right? Right? I thought the ice cream set too hard when it froze overnight, so I added a stiff double of gin to my sorbet to help it keep its scoopability.

Ingredients

Makes 800ml of sorbet

500ml water
500g sugar
6 lemons

Lemon Sorbet Ingredients. The pan contains the syrup.

Method

Dissolve the sugar into the water to make a medium syrup.
Whilst that’s going its thing, squeeze all the juice out of the lemons. If you’ve managed to find unwaxed fruit, grate in 1 zest too. Extra marks for working out why unwaxed cost so much more than shiny, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just miss one part out?

I wound up with about 275ml of lemon juice. Yours will vary by the size of your lemons.
Stir it all into the syrup and let it cool to room temperature, then chill it down to as close to freezing as you can get without crystals forming. This took me about two hours with the fridge and freezer!

Churn it for 30 minutes in the machine, then you’ll probably need to give it another 20-30 minutes in the freezer before its firm enough to serve.

Freshly churned Lemon Sorbet

This recipe stayed at the perfect consistency even when frozen for a few days and it tasted excellent in a glass with a slurp of Williamine eau-de-vie poured over.

Frozen homemade Lemon Sorbet