SOUR CHERRY & LEMON ICE-BOX CAKE

You can use regular sweet cherries for this dessert, but the flavour won’t be quite the same, so you’ll need to double the lemon juice, reduce the sugar a little and add a few drops of almond extract to get you close.

Serves 12 l Unsalted butter or neutraltasting oil (see tip across the bottom of the page), for greasing

For the sour cherry compote l 600g (1lb 5oz) frozen pitted

sour cherries, defrosted l 120ml (4fl oz) kirsch l 100g (3½oz) caster sugar l Juice of ½ a lemon l 2tbsp cornflour

For the filling l 250g (9oz) mascarpone l 35g (1¼oz) icing sugar l 800ml (28fl oz) double cream l 1tsp vanilla bean paste l 150g (5½oz) lemon curd

For the layers l 270g (9¾oz) digestive biscuits

Lightly grease a 23cm x 33cm baking tin and line the base with parchment. If you want to remove the cake from the tin to serve, line it with a piece of parchment paper that overhangs the two long sides.

For the cherry compote, place the cherries, kirsch, sugar and lemon juice into a large saucepan and cook over a medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, until the fruit softens and releases a lot of juice. Use a slotted spoon to remove the cherries to a heatproof bowl, leaving the syrup behind in the pan. Continue cooking the syrup until it is reduced to about 240ml.

Place the cornflour in a bowl and whisk in a little of the cherry syrup to form a smooth paste. Add this to the cherry syrup in the pan and simmer, stirring, for a couple of minutes, or until slightly thickened. Pour the syrup over the fruit, cool slightly, then cover with clingfilm and chill until cool.

For the filling, whisk together the mascarpone, icing sugar, 600ml of the cream and the vanilla in a bowl until the mixture just starts to hold its shape. Add the lemon curd and continue whisking until the mixture holds soft peaks. To assemble the dessert, spread a thin layer of the lemon cream over the base of the prepared tin, then cover with a layer of biscuits, breaking them up as needed. Spread with half of the remaining lemon cream and then dollop over about a third of the cherry compote. Repeat the layering a second time and then finish with a final layer of the biscuits.

Cover the tin with clingfilm and chill or freeze for at least 4 hours before serving. Just before serving, whip the remaining cream to soft peaks and spread over the dessert. Cut into slices and serve each portion with a spoonful of the remaining compote. Store in a sealed container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks; if refrigerated, it will keep for 3-4 days.