Raspberry and rose wine sorbet

So, there's been a few blog posts I've been meaning to put up for a while now, but life has kind of got in the way. (I'll tell you more about that once things are a bit more settled...)

In the meantime, you can have a recipe that would have been very timely, had I put it up when I actually tested it out - it's lovely for the summer, and down here, that still goes on for a little bit longer yet, though the days are noticeably cooler now than they were in proper summer...

I bought myself an icecream maker this summer - I'd wanted one for ages, and summer in a hot country with some spare money (thank you former colleagues!) seemed like an excellent time to try it out.

The machine came with some recipes, but none of them particularly inspired me. So, to Google I hied. (Other search engines are available, blah blah blah...) It produced two fabulous recipes - well, two that I've tried so far, others are on the To Do list. (Stop laughing, you at the back, I do make To Do lists, even if the stuff on them never manages to get done!)

One was a basic vanilla custard icecream, which was lovely, but this post is about the Raspberry and Rosé wine sorbet the Guardian kindly shared. It. Was. Divine.

I even have some step by step photos (well, almost step by step - I missed a couple of steps because I wasn't paying attention. You get what you pay for, on this blog!)

Note that this is best made the night before you actually need it, since it will need some time in the freezer, unless you have an amazingly awesome icecream maker, I suppose...

Instructions:

First, heat up 500ml of rosé wine with 130(ish) grams of sugar in a saucepan. Make sure the sugar is dissolved, by stirring occasionally.

Then, add your raspberries (340 grams of them, or the nearest equivalent depending on the size of your punnets) to a large container (this bit's important - it needs to fit all your raspberries *and* the wine...) and pour on the wine/sugar mix. Leave to cool.

Once the mixture is cool, blend with a blender so all the raspberries are properly mixed into the wine mixture. (You can probably also do this with a fork, if you have no blender, but it will be fiddly and messy if you do.)

In an ideal world, at this stage you would sieve the mixture into another jug, to get rid of all the raspberry pips. I don't have a sieve, so that didn't happen. (I would recommend doing it if you do, though, the pips were quite noticeable in the final sorbet! Not a problem, just noticeable...)

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the fridge, so it takes less time for your sorbet maker to freeze it. I put it in the fridge for an hour or so while I did other things.

Add the mixture to the machine, in line with the instructions for your machine. For mine, that means starting it up, then pouring it through the little hole in the lid. Which always leads to spilling, because I am just that gifted. Then you can go away and do other things for half an hour or so, while the sorbet machine does its thing. Note that the wine in this sorbet will slow down the freezing time, because alcohol always does.

Once it's done, it will probably still need some time in the freezer to properly solidify, because of the wine. Pour into an appropriate container and put in your freezer for a couple of hours.

Leave it out of the freezer for a few minutes before scooping - it will soften quickly and be much easier to serve!

Eat, and enjoy the concentrated taste of summer. It is bliss.