Watermelon Granita with Mint and Lime

Watermelon Granita with Mint and Lime

This recipe is modified from the Vegetarian Times' Farmer's Market Cookbook magazine.

It's a great dessert that my boys were only too happy to help me make this weekend.

Brennan attempted a granita from a kids' cookbook a couple of weekends ago, but we didn't have the ingredients on hand.  So he made up his own version (including bottled lime juice and vanilla extract, blech).  Didn't exactly work but he was so proud of his efforts!

I promise the one below is really, really good!

A granita is a semi-frozen dessert that is similar to a sorbet or an Italian ice.

We started by creating a flavored, simple syrup over medium heat.

Brennan heated water, sugar, lime zest, and a mint spring until the sugar was dissolved.

We used this sweetener, but regular sugar will work.

The recipe calls for a long curl of lime zest that you remove before freezing.  Brennan instead decided just to zest the lime.  It worked just fine.

Then we chopped up about 15 cups of watermelon and pureed it in the blender.

Thomas then strained it to get just the juice.  We added lime juice to the watermelon juice.

We removed the mint sprig from the simple syrup and combined it with the watermelon juice, and poured it all into a 9x13 inch baking dish, and popped it uncovered into the freezer.

After 45 minutes I took it out and used a fork to incorporate the frozen parts with the rest of the juice.

Then we checked it and "fluffed" it with a fork every 30 minutes (or so) for 3 hours.

This photo below shows Brennan mixing it up again after about 2 1/2 hours total freezing time.

After about 4 hours freezing time total, it's ready to serve.

At that point, cover the granita with Saran Wrap to keep it from freezing solid.

A wonderful fresh fruit dessert for summer!!

Double click to print as a 5x7 recipe card.

Enjoy!