Blackberry Sorbet

Blackberries are without doubt the gems of Autumn and I love them, however they are definitely a labour of love if you decide to go and pick your own! I did just that last week with my Mother and Sister-in-law and it was worth every little thorn prick and scratch we got! Thankfully this year, having learned my lesson in the past, I came prepared and brought with me a pair of rubber gloves (or Marigolds if you prefer!) which definitely helped. In the end we all left with a good few buckets of beautiful, sweet, gleaming blackberries.

After eating quite a lot of the perfectly sweet berries I decided it was time to do something else with them so since we are having a beautiful Indian Summer I decided on some Blackberry Sorbet. It is so easy to make and really lets the flavours of the blackberries shine. It is definitely one of my absolute favourite ways to enjoy blackberries.

Personally I love to eat this on it's own but if you are serving it for a dinner party dessert it is equally delicious with some thin shortbread biscuits or for an extra special treat serve in individual glass and top with some Sparkly!

225g/ 1 cup sugar

250ml/ 1 cup water

500g blackberries, cleaned

Juice of ½ lemon (roughly 2 tbsp)

Put the sugar and water in a medium sized pan and cook gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring from time to time. Once it's dissolved let the sugar syrup simmer gently for roughly 5 minutes until it has thickened slightly. Leave to cool.

Once the sugar syrup has cooled put the blackberries and half of the syrup into a blender and puree until smooth. Sieve the blackberry mixture into a large measuring jug or bowl to get rid of all of the seeds. Add the lemon juice and taste to check everything is balanced. Depending on how sweet your blackberries are add more of the sugar syrup if needed.

Put the mixture into the bowl of an ice cream maker (if you don't have an ice cream maker simply pop the mixture into a big enough tupper ware container then pop straight into the freezer. After a couple of hours remove it from the freezer and break down with a fork. Return to the freezer and repeat the process one more time before letting it freeze completely.) and freeze according to the maufacturer's instructions (my machine takes about 25-30 minutes). Put the sorbet into a container then freeze completely until ready to serve, removing it from the freezer 5-10 minutes before you want to serve it.