Sorbets

Even though the weather’s a bit Baltic the seasonal fruit at this time of year makes lush sorbet. These water-based ices made with real fruit puree have a concentrated taste and refreshing flavour that can work as a dessert or palate cleanser.

Any excess of blackberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, pears and even apples can be used to make sorbet (see Top tips for great results with ices). Once made, sorbets can be defrosted at a later date to make a slushy drink, or used as a sauce over ice cream and fresh fruit salads.

Here are a few of the best options in the frozen aisle. Bottlegreen’s elderflower sorbet, made with hand-picked elderflower blossom and Cotswold spring water has a light, fragrant taste. While the young Italian brothers who run Oddono’s gelateria in South Kensington, London, churn out zero-fat green apple and fig flavours that are sold in Selfridges.

Chill out

Whether it's a hit of sorbet or a scoop of ice cream, we can hardly contain our excitement. Try these recipes from Lucas Hollwegg

• Easy strawberry ice cream

• Chocolate sorbet

• Raspberry and mint sorbet

The big freeze

Gordon Ramsay gets to grips with the science behind the perfect sorbet

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Exotic flavours work well, too, in cooling sorbets. Purbeck ice-cream makers in Dorset produce a zingy Lemon Jazz flavour as well as lavender, rose, pomegranate, quince and buck's fizz flavours.

Della Negra’s bottled mandarin orange sorbet, sold at Whole Foods Market in Kensington, has a lively vodka kick which pales in comparison to its absinthe sorbet (good with venison, lamb or goat apparently). The traditional Italian firm's delicate yet creamy green tea sorbet makes an ideal finale to a meal.

In the supermarkets, Marks and Spencer’s alphonso mango sorbet combines Dartmoor spring water with the perfumed sweetness of organic Indian mangoes.

Ice-creams

A holiday ice-cream is no longer a case of fluffy vanilla “with or without a flake”. Britain’s chefs and parlours offer more exotic flavours than ever, many of them using local and seasonal ingredients.

For example, the winners in the pudding category of last year’s Britain’s Best Dish on ITV made a Roquefort ice-cream served with wine biscuits and boozy grapes, and a delicate green tea ice-cream.

At this time of year, Paul Askew, chef at the London Carriage Works restaurant in Liverpool’s Hope Street Hotel, has an exquisite blackcurrant tart on the menu served with liquorice ice-cream and a glass of syrupy Pedro Ximenez antique sherry (hopestreethotel.co.uk).

Mr B’s “famously fresh” retro ice-cream parlour in Hayle, Cornwall, churns out ice cream according to season. Right now he has rhubarb crumble, Turkish delight and damson plum pie flavours and a blackcurrant sorbet that uses locally sourced fruits (mrbsicecream.co.uk).

Up the road on Heslett Farm, Boscastle, Sarah Talbot-Ponsonby uses organic milk to produce a dense “grainy” ice cream with grown-up flavours such as rose with cardamom and almond, honey and lavender, bramley apple with cinnamon as well as saffron and a scumptious greengage (heslettfarm.com).

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