Coffee and cream granita

At ‘The Basement’ supper club I run with ‘E’, we often serve simple granitas or ices as a pre-dessert course. They’re refreshing, act as a bit of palate cleanser and are a nice way of moving from savoury to sweeter flavours. They are also, as you’d expect from me, incredibly sophisticated and posh.

At our most recent supper we served a coffee and cream granita. The coffee part we pinched from Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Just Desserts’ (which is a frigging awesome book by the way), I thought it’d be nice to pour a splash of cream over it, just before serving. It’s bloody nice.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, it actually tastes a little bit like one of those iced coffees available from shitty high street chain coffee shops, but please don’t let that put you off. This is much more intense and über.

Here’s the recipe…

Coffee and Cream Granita

Serves 6-8

You’ll Need:-

100g Sugar

150ml Water

2 Cardamom pods

1 Strip orange zest

500ml Fresh espresso coffee, cooled

Double Cream to serve

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir until dissolved. Add the cardamom and orange zest and boil for 3 mins.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 1 hour before discarding the cardamom pods and the orange zest.

Mix the coffee with the infused syrup and chill.

Once cold, pour into a shallow container and refrigerate for 2-3 hours until partially frozen. Every hour or so, give it a stir with a fork, scraping the frozen crystals into the liquid. After a few hours of this, it will have a nice icy granular texture and be ready to serve.

Spoon some into a glass, splash a bit of cream over.

Eat.

Try not to suffer brain-freeze.