Lemon chocolate sorbet

I do own an ice-cream maker, but the bowl tends to sit in the freezer taking up space and the other bits do likewise on top of the fridge.  So when we got a new fridge-freezer recently the Swan Whisperer more or less said "Use it or lose it".

So I was half planning to make Clothilde's wonderful dark chocolate sorbet anyway, but yesterday a friend said that for her, one scoop of chocolate ice-cream and one scoop of lemon sorbet was a match made in heaven.

So I thought, well, why not lemon chocolate sorbet?  I cut back the water a bit from Clothilde's recipe, and upped the sugar in order to add the lemons.

3 unwaxed lemons
140 g granulated sugar
250 ml water
40 g unsweetened cocoa powder
80 g good-quality dark chocolate (70% at a bare minimum)
2 tbs limoncello

Either peel the lemons very finely (don't get any of the white pith) with a potato peeler or grate the rind on a lemon zester or equvalent.  Place into heatproof jug with the sugar, and pour the boiling water over this.  Stir well and leave to stand while you squeeze the lemons and chop the chocolate into as small pieces as you can be bothered.

Put the cocoa powder into a saucepan and strain the lemon water on to it.  Whisking and stirring all the time, bring to the boil, and, as soon as it boils up (don't let it boil over!), pour it on to the chopped chocolate (which you have, of course, transferred to the jug you originally used to steep the lemon peel).  Stir vigorously until the chocolate dissolves and you have a smooth fluid.  Now add the lemon juice and limoncello (you can leave this out if you don't have any, or if children are going to eat this, but all sorbets and ice creams are improved with a little alcohol in them), stir again, and leave to cool.  When cool, chill thoroughly in fridge.

Freeze in your ice-cream maker (or in a shallow tray, stirring every hour to break up the crystals) and enjoy!  I served with a peach-and-raspberry sauce (home-made) and some thick cream with limoncello which I'd happened to see in Tesco's earlier.

VERDICT:  Tastes absolutely lovely, but a little watery.  Not sure quite how to deal with that - perhaps make sure there is no more than 275 ml total of liquid, whether lemon juice or water, and then bring it all to the boil together, and strain out the lemon peel before adding the solid chocolate?  Or boil for longer?

It would be greedy to have a second helping, wouldn't it?


EDITED: Made this again last week (10 November) and altered it to about 250 g sugar to 200 ml water/lemon juice, which I brought to the boil, boiled hard for one minute, then added the cocoa powder, brought it back just to the boil (this was my grandmother's chocolate sauce recipe: 6 oz sugar, 1/4 pint water, 2 oz cocoa powder),  then added the chopped chocolate.  Much better - thicker, and less watery.  And rather too much limoncello so it didn't freeze quite properly, but was none the worse for that!