Frozen Yoghurt

I needed a quick treat at lunchtime last week, after a fairly hellish morning in the office, but didn’t want to resort to the clichéd chocolate bar. I recently read about the rise of the frozen yogurt bar in London in Time Out, and decided to check out the closest one to my office. After a quick bit of research that turned out to be Yog, on Charlotte Street, so off I set.

There seems to be a theme with these frozen yogurt places, from my limited experience anyway. The only other one I know is Snog, in South Kensington, but I have only ever walked past. Both have single syllable names (remarkably similar ones too). They also have similar décor, predominantly white with flashes of bright colours. The menu is straightforward at Yog, small or large frozen yogurt in either natural or dark chocolate flavours, with a selection of toppings laid out in the counter.

I went for a plain dark chocolate. It was good, but both the yogurt and the chocolate are quite strong flavours, and I felt that they competed with each other more than complemented. It definitely fitted the bill as a light treat though (a regular chocolate one had 119 calories), and I think I will be returning.

The next day I was walking through Covent Garden at lunchtime and remembered about Yu-Foria, which is another frozen yogurt shop, downstairs in the market building. They also have a stall on Thursdays at the Covent Garden market. I though that it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two, so I popped in.

They had a similar offering to Yog, although there seemed to be more tempting unhealthy toppings, such as marshmallows and bits of fudge. They offer natural, chocolate and a special flavour, although no where did I see it advertised what the special actually was, which seems a bit strange. It was slightly more expensive here, although I suppose they can get away with it in the heart of tourist-land.

In the interests of comparing like with like I went for a plain chocolate. This version was much creamier than that at Yog, and the chocolate was much less strong. This meant that it ended up not tasting of much really. I like my chocolate really dark, so the Yog one was my preference.

To be honest I think I went down the wrong track with these frozen yogurts, and I should have gone for a plain yogurt with a topping. Perhaps my next post will be a taste test of those!

Chocolate Sorbet

This week is National Chocolate Week, so it seemed to be the prefect time to post this recipe.

I can’t say firmly enough how much you have to make this sorbet, if you are at all a chocolate fan. It is chocolate in its purest form, unadulterated by cream or any other additional flavours. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be good with some orange in it, but first time round it needs to be made straight up.

I was really dubious about making chocolate sorbet. I mean, it sounds like a poor relation of chocolate ice cream. However, I had read a couple of people raving about it, and it does have a lot of chocolate in it, so I thought it couldn’t be too bad. It is also gluten and dairy-free, which is an added bonus. I don’t even have an ice-cream maker, and still believe it is more than worth the effort. I can't remember where I wrote the recipe down from, so apologies for not giving the credit.

Chocolate Sorbet

555 ml water
200g caster sugar
75g cocoa powder (yes really!)
Pinch salt
170g dark chocolate
½ tsp vanilla extract

Whisk 375 ml of water with the sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Bring to the boil, whisking frequently. Boil, while whisking, for 45 seconds.

Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate until melted, then add the remaining water and vanilla. Leave to cool. Then either use an ice-cream machine according to the instructions, or put in a freezer-proof container and freeze. Every hour or so remove from the freezer and whisk, to ensure there are no crystals. This needs to be done three or four times.

It freezes very solid, so make sure you remove it from the freezer twenty minutes or so before you want to serve it. This was particularly good with orange shortbread biscuits.