Black Forest gateau ice-cream with cookies and cherry syrup

Put the cherries in a colander and leave to drain. Catch the juice and set aside. Roughly chop a quarter of the cherries and also put to one side.

Using a hand blender, blend the remaining cherries to a fine purée with cherry brandy as desired, icing sugar, cocoa and a pinch of salt. Whip the cream until soft peaks form and then gradually stir it in to the purée. Then transfer the mixture to the ice-cream maker and freeze for about 30 minutes until it has a creamy consistency.

In the meantime, roughly chop the cookies. Reduce the cherry juice with the sugar until you have approx. 80 ml of syrup and then place in a clean screw-top jar until needed.

Stir the chopped cherries and cookies into the ice-cream. Put the mixture in a tub and freeze for approx. 2 hours until it becomes more solid.

Take the ice-cream out of the freezer around 30 minutes before you intend to serve it. Scoop out the ice-cream and arrange in dessert bowls. Drizzle with the cherry syrup and sprinkle with chocolate shavings to serve.

Tip

If you don’t have an ice-cream maker

You can also put the ice-cream mixture in a metal bowl and then in the freezer. Stir well every 30 minutes so that no large ice crystals form. Ensure that you stir in any ice-cream that has already solidified around the edges. Repeat this process several times until the mixture is creamy.