Grown Up Shandy Ice Lollies

Do you remember shandy ice lollies from the ice cream van? I only ordered them occasionally, flitting between my love for cornettos, those lollies with a thick fruit shell around a vanilla ice cream core and of course, the amazing screwball with bubblegum balls at the bottom of an inverted dalek of soft white ice cream.

I decided to make a grown up version – a slightly stronger flavour of beer mixed into traditional lemonade with less sugar and more sharpness.

Grown Up Shandy Ice Lollies

Makes approximately 3 lollies

Ingredients
200 ml beer of your choice, not overly hoppy
200 ml traditional lemonade

Note: I used one of Pete’s home brew beers, a dark mild ale. Don’t use one that is too strongly hopped as the bitterness will be increased by the reduction process. For the lemonade, I used Ben Shaws cloudy lemonade, which has a sharp real lemon flavour.

Method

• Over a low heat, reduce the beer by three quarters (till you’re left with 50 ml of liquid).
• Add the beer reduction to your cloudly lemonade bit by bit until you’re happy with the balance. I added 30 ml to 200 ml of lemonade.
• Mix well and freeze. I used my Zoku to freeze the liquid quickly but these would work perfectly well poured into traditional lolly moulds and popped into the freezer for a few hours. If you haven’t got lolly moulds, use small plastic cups!

The result was definitely more grown up than the shandy lollies of my childhood, with a decent lemon tang and real beer flavour.