This chilled dessert or inter-course lemon sorbet or sorbete de limón is traditionally served at Spanish weddings. It’s an easy dish to prepare which can be made up to a month in advance and stores well in the freezer without losing its flavour or any freshness.
Spanish Lemon Sorbet With Cava Recipe
To serve four people
Ingredients:
-3-4 lemons
-1¼ cups fine sugar, caster if poss, or mill some granulated sugar
-1 bottle Spanish cava, chilled –to serve
Directions:
-To get the most juice out of the lemons roll them on the worktop pressing firmly for a minute or two. With a sharp knife pare of fine strips of rind and put them aside to use as decorations.
-Finely grate three of the lemons, and squeeze the lemons to get enough juice for ¼ cup.
-Put the water and sugar in a pan to dissolve the sugar. Bring it to the boil and continue boiling for 2 minutes – without stirring.
-Remove the pan from the heat and add the grated lemon rind. Stir well and leave it for at least 30 minutes or until cool
-Add the lemon juice to the mixture when it is cool. Sieve the liquid and put into an ice-maker and freeze following the ice-cream makers directions.
-If you don’t have an ice-cream maker sieve the mixture into a plastic dish or container and put it in the freezer for 2 hours or until the mix is still mushy but hardening around the edges.
-Tip the mixture into a bowl and beat it well, then return it to the freezer. This must be done twice more. Then it is done.
-To serve you dessert, remove the lemon sorbet from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving to allow it to soften slightly.
-Add one or two scoops of sorbet to a tall glass or champagne glass, use the strips of lemon rind to decorate the sorbet and fill the glass half to two-thirds full with the cava (or champagne)
Serving Suggestion:
-This dessert is often served in the lemon skins.
-To do this, slice the top off the lemon and using a sharp teaspoon or grapefruit spoon remove all the fruit or flesh from inside the lemon. It’s a good idea to slice a small amount from what will be the base – so that the lemon will stand nicely upright.
-Spoon the sorbet into the lemon shell and place in the freezer until frozen, decorate with lemon rind strips, and add champagne on serving.
Either way of serving this easy yet special dessert is attractive, but more fun and safer for children is to use lemon shells. It also makes serving quicker and easier with less washing-up!