In just a few weeks time, Mrs J’s niece will come to visit her. She’s just turned 4 and it will be her first time in an airplane and her first visit to Mrs J’s house. No doubt there will be reason to make use of Mrs J’s new toy during the visit – the ice-cream machine!

In the meantime, Mrs J figured she’d take it for a more adult spin. Get to know it a little. Give it a poke. See what works and what doesn’t. Who says winter isn’t the season for ice-cream?

If you’ve visited the area around Nancy in France, you may have run into the local bon-bons that are flavoured with bergamot. Mrs J is happy to admit that she originally thought that bergamot was a herb, whereas it’s actually a type of citrus fruit.

Apparently, bergamot meat and juice in larger quantities present quite the culinary challenge. But Mrs J very much enjoys her daily cup of Earl Grey tea, which is flavoured with bergamot, and also quite likes those little Nancy bon-bons. So she decided to try making an Earl Grey sorbet.

How hard can it be?

As this is Mrs J’s very first attempt to make home made sorbet the basis for the recipe came with the machine itself. Though Mrs J decided to change the type of tea and to use syrup rather than caster sugar. (She’s never been very good at taking orders.)

First, bring 500 ml of water to the boil. Pour the water over 4 bags of Earl Grey tea and let steep to make a very strong tea.

Remove the teabags and add 50g of honey and 100g of white sugar syrup or caster sugar. For the sake of full disclosure, please note that the original recipe calls for 150g of sugar. The very thought of this made Mrs J’s hair stand on end. So she called it quits at 100g and then just added another 10g of sweetener in a (possibly futile) attempt to reduce the calorie count. And she thinks it’s possible to reduce the sugar even further.

Chill the mixture thoroughly. When the mix is fridge temperature, add the juice of half a lime. Pour into your prepared ice-cream machine. Turn on and wait for the beep.

And wait…

And wait…

At the sound of the beep (or whenever the sorbet is the consistency you prefer), scoop out and serve immediately. Or scoop into a container and put in the freezer for an hour or so. This firms up the sorbet which was quite soft coming straight out of Mrs J’s machine.

Quenelling isn’t Mrs J’s forte, obviously. But it still tastes good!