I’ve never really been that excited about eating sorbet. Unless the weather’s very hot, I’ll always get stuck at the chocolate or vanilla because I’m greedy like that. But then I suddenly felt inspired to make this sorbet – the idea came from making a big batch of elderflower cordial, and I thought perhaps I could make a pudding with it as the current heatwave struck. How bad or boring could an elderflower sorbet be, exactly?

Well, as it turns out, this one was – and I totally parp my own trumpet here – AMAZING. It was like eating sweet, fluffy, tangy snow. It had a magical texture that felt just like eating a lightly scooped handful from a fresh snowdrift. Topped with a strawberry, it was the most delicious thing to eat after an indulgent weekend lunch. I had three portions that day!

The only snag with this recipe is that I’m afraid you will need an ice cream maker to make it. Sorry about that. But if you’ve been blessed with one of these and haven’t used it for ages, rejoice! Dust it down and get it out of the cupboard. And you don’t have to have made your own cordial either – that would be ridiculous – just go and buy a nice bottle from a shop.

I tweaked a recipe I found here – thanks to the Honest Cooking blog.

Makes roughly a litre of frozen HEAVEN

You will need:

Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lime
3 tablespoons caster sugar (I use Fairtrade Golden Caster)
1 cup water
425ml of undiluted elderflower cordial
2 free range egg whites

First of all, heat the sugar and water together in a small saucepan, until the sugar dissolves. Then let the mixture cool for about 15 minutes.
Mix the cordial together with the lemon juice, lime juice and cooled sugar water.
Whisk the egg whites into a stiff foam using an electric whisk (or by hand if you have arms like Mr T).

Add the egg whites to the liquid citrus/elderflower/sugar mixture and mix in – it won’t really mix together, but float on the top. This is fine.

Have your ice cream maker at the ready and tip the mixture into the bowl. Churn for about 20 minutes or so, or however long it takes for the mixture to bind together, freeze and be almost spilling out of the top – it expands quite a lot. Obviously this will also depend on your model of ice cream maker.

Not quite there yet…

Boom! Ready! Can anyone spot the sneaky owl?

Spoon the sorbet into a bowl and whack it into the freezer until needed. Take it out five minutes before you need to scoop it out so that it softens a bit for easy scooping. Top with a strawberry and voila – classy summer dessert! Could be really nice with a shot of vodka poured over the top, too…