A Spoonful of Summer

Last week, school closed early for the summer because a student caught swine flu, which meant my summer holiday started a week early. The first thing I did was go camping at the beach, have a barbeque, go to the beach for the second time, make this and two other ice creams (coming soon!). Temperatures are getting as high as 32 C already. Now, summer is truly in the air.


If you go to to any supermarket here now, you'll see staff arranging cartons and cartons of huge strawberries onto the fruit aisle. In Hong Kong, practically everything we eat is imported, and these strawberries are from America. So before everything is gone, I grabbed a carton, lined up to pay for it, and began to brainstorm as to what to do with these juicy jewels.


Eventually, I chose a recipe out of my new ice cream book and decided to attempt sorbet for the first time. Surprisingly, this recipe has an ingredient that I haven't seen before in ice creams or sorbets - gelatine. But I think it was the addition of it that made the texture cottony soft and not overly frozen. A scoop of this is packed with the sweetness of strawberries, the tanginess of lemon juice, and lightly spiked with a little booze. What's more, it's also low in fat.


Now go grab some strawberries, churn yourself a batch of this refreshing dessert and cool off from the heat!

Strawberry Sorbet
Adapted from Ice Cream Book by Junko Fukuda (Original recipe in Chinese)

30ml + 3tbsp Water (measured separately)
70g Sugar
300g Strawberries, hulled and halved
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1tbsp Rum
5g Gelatine

*Amounts of sugar and lemon juice can be adjusted accordingly to suit the strawberry's sweetness or tartness

1. Place the 3tbsp water in a small, microwaveable bowl and sprinkle on the gelatine. Leave for it to bloom.
2. In a small saucepan, place the sugar and the remaining water and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside to cool.
3. Place the strawberries, lemon juice, rum and the cold syrup into a blender. Whizz until the the mixture is homogeneous. Transfer into a large bowl.
4. Place the gelatine mixture into the microwave and heat it on medium for around 30 seconds (or less) until the gelatine is thoroughly dissolved. Slowly mix it into the strawberry mixture.
5. Place the bowl on top of an ice bath and cool, stirring occasionally. The mixture should thicken slightly.
6. Churn the mixture for around 20 minutes or until frozen.