Chilli Cardamom Sorbet

Serves: 6

Preparation: 25 minutes + 30 minutes in an ice cream machine or 4-6 hours freezing | Cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

  • 250g Caster Sugar
  • 100g Cocoa Powder
  • 4–6 Cardamom Pods, depending on size, crushed
  • 1/2–1 Red Bird's Eye Chilli, deseeded but not chopped,to taste

Tuile Biscuits

  • 1 Egg White
  • 50g Caster Sugar
  • 25g Butter, melted
  • 25g Plain Flour, sifted
  • 2 drops Vanilla Essence
  • 1 tsp Cocoa Powder, sifted

Method

Put 600ml of water and the sugar in a saucepan and bring slowly to the boil.

Add the cocoa powder, crushed cardamom pods and their seeds and the chilli and stir until the cocoa has dissolved.

Simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the mixture is syrupy. Leave to cool then strain.

Pour the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn for 30 minutes or until thick and firm enough to scoop. Transfer to the freezer until ready to serve.
Alternatively, pour the syrup into a small non-stick cake tin or roasting tin and freeze for 4–6 hours, beating two or three times when semi frozen to break up the ice crystals. Return to the freezer for several hours or overnight until firm.

Meanwhile, make the biscuits. Heat the oven to 200C and line two baking sheets with non-stick baking paper.

Fork the egg white and sugar together in a bowl until just mixed. Add the melted butter, flour and vanilla essence and fork together until smooth.

Transfer 1 tablespoon of the mixture to a cup and mix in the sifted cocoa powder until smooth.

Spoon into a greaseproof paper piping bag and fold the top down to enclose.

Drop teaspoons of the plain biscuit mixture on to the paper-lined baking sheets to make 12 biscuits then spread very thinly so each is about 7.5cm in diameter. Snip the tip off the end of the piping bag then pipe hearts, names, initials or a pattern on to each biscuit.

Bake for 4–6 minutes until pale golden around the edges then leave to cool on the paper.

When ready to serve, take the sorbet out of the freezer and leave to soften at room temperature for 10 minutes or until soft enough to scoop.

Spoon into small glasses and serve with the biscuits.

Tip

The chocolate mixture can be piped over the biscuits in zigzag lines and the biscuits cooked, just three or four at a time, on a tray lined with non-stick baking paper. When baked, leave for a few seconds then lift off the paper and wrap around the handle of a wooden spoon. When cool slide off the spoon for a biscuit known as a cigarette russe.

Try shaping larger biscuits over an orange. When cool, spoon the sorbet into the biscuit cups.

Don't try to cook and shape too many at a time or they will have set before you can shape them.

They can also be made without the cocoa and half dipped into melted chocolate after baking.

This recipe is from Chocolate Success published by Simon & Schuster in 2011.