Allergy free chocolate sorbet dream

Pacojet is definitely top of my lust-list for 2015. For those not familiar, this is the specialised fine, in all it's literal sense, food making machine and therefore ideal for making ice cream, mousses, baby food, etc, and perhaps even chocolate - now that's an idea! Anyway, back to ice cream; I have made ice cream and sorbet many a time, however, I do not own an ice cream maker - definitely not one as fascinating as the Paco - and being as forgetful as ever, I often forget to keep whisking/ churning the ice cream when it has gone into the freezer. Not that the dreaded ice crystals stop me from eating the whole thing anyway..but I would rather Pacojetify it, if you know what I mean. But space is rather unforgiving in our kitchen, so perhaps it is timely to do some in depth research into the process of making ice cream without the gadgets. Very established ice cream authorities insist the key to ice cream is the composition of sugar, fat (including nut fat) and solids. Oh, that and the lack of ice crystals, which should be achievable if the mixture were frozen in the shortest time possible, with enough violent whisking in between. Surely that would mean freezing the mixture hot...? Instead, the key is to chill the mixture before freeze/whisk/freeze/whisk..

I'm determined to make at least one successful batch of ice cream / sorbet before advancing to trial-ing my own ideas. This is a grave departure from my usual but one hopes with good reason - whilst we were in Santa Barbara we had the most fantastic chocolate sorbet, from Spoon or something similarly called; for anyone visiting, it is that outfit opposite "Jane", the restaurant. Yes, chocolate sorbet. I've never even heard of chocolate sorbet. And it's dairy and egg free...Ok, so I live a very sheltered life, but not anymore - gluten, dairy and egg free chocolate sorbet, homemade. Paco-me-up.

Recipe from the barefoot, adapted, of course...

1 cup sugar (I usually half the sugar amount but frozen stuff really need that sugar)

1/2 cup cocoa powder (I used 100% cocoa blocks instead...)

1 shot espresso

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp sea salt

2 cups water

1 1/2 tbsp coffee liqueur (we used Patron as that's gluten free and what we had at home)

Put everything except the Patron into a saucepan and heat over low heat stirring constantly. Off the heat, add the Patron and chill in the fridge. I left mine for 24 hours (because I forgot about it). Put it into the freezer for 2-3 hours then blend/whisk every hour after until you are happy with it. Then leave to freeze proper for 6 hours minimum.

Personal experience notes : 
1) Scouring the internet and everyone tells me I need to whisk the damn thing more often in the first two hours and that's what I was doing these two years past... But, Julia Child, the other (or the original) goddess, insists instead that the first freeze needs to be for 2-3 hours until it is set, and it worked a treat.
2) add alcohol - panacea, even for ice cream.
3) Julia Child suggests leaving the sorbet in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving - but, like all other things, I like my ice cream / sorbet hard.. other things being bread of course (scroll down for the recipe)
4) do not eat chocolate sorbet for breakfast. not everyday anyway.