Recipe: Whitley Neill Gin and Pink Grapefruit Sorbet

So apparently summer is going to try and make a small comeback over the next week or so and, as it’s my birthday today, it seemed fitting to do something gin related. After all, I’m going to drink a lot of it today.

I’ve been dying to do something for the freezer for a while and have a second recipe in mind for a good punchy citrus gin, but this one was totally borne of the flavours of Whitley Neill gin. It’s botanicalis – angelica root, baobab fruit, cassia bark, coriander seeds, juniper, orris root, physalis, sweet lemon peel and sweet orange peel, make it a good sipping gin and ideal for this sort of dessert. Add to that the good levels of citrus from the peels and the physalis and it’s a great friend to grapefruit, they compliment each other well, the gin actually softening the bitterness of the grapefruit and both bringing out floral elements in each other.

A great partnership.

So, this weekend, I put together the recipe and I’m really impressed with it. I think I’ve got the balance of sweet, bitter and boozy quite well matched, but of course, if you want to adjust it, it’s easy to do, just add more sugar, more gin, or more juice.

N.B. this doesn’t translate to ounces very well, so I’ve stuck with grams.

Gin and Grapefruit Sorbet

Ingredients:

175g Golden caster sugar

250ml Pink grapefruit juice (fresh, not the concentrated stuff)

70ml Whitley Neill Gin

Method:

Place gin, sugar and juice into a pan on the hob.

Heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Bring to the boil and boil very gently until the consistency becomes syrupy. This should only take a minute or so.

Pour into a container and leave to cool.

When cool, pop the container into the freezer. At this point, if you have an icecream maker, put it in that and freeze as per instructions. If like me, you haven’t then follow the next point.

Revisit the freezer every 2 hours or so, just to stir the sorbet and stop ice crystals forming. Thankfully the gin will help with this anyway.

As it contains booze, you shouldn’t need to remove it from the freezer ahead of serving, I found it serves almost straight from the tub. Though I did have to stop myself from just visiting it with a spoon to, er, taste.

Serve in a pretty bowl, maybe with a glass of gin to accompany.

I hope you enjoy the recipe, I have another one I want to try this weekend, with a slightly different theme – and just as I’ve written that, another idea has popped in to my head.

Oh my. This could keep going for a while.