Lemon Granita (with a special winter twist)

I recently made lemon granita with some friends on our "Homemade Italian Pizza" night. Granita is a fruit ice that originated in southern Italy. We made ours with the meyer lemons from my tree.

While I was up at Lake Tahoe for

spring break, I had a lot of lemons I needed to process. I used the rinds for making limoncello (an Italian lemon liqueur), and that meant I had lots of juice to use.

It's very simple. Here's how you do it.

Combine 1 and 1/4 cups sugar with 2 cups water in a medium sauce pan. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Boil the s

ugar water for 5 minutes. Add 1 cup lemon juice and 1 T. grated lemon zest. Return to a boil and boil for 3 more minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely. This can be stored in the fridge for a day or two until you're ready to freeze it.

Put a metal pan in the freezer to chill for at least 10 minutes. Pour in the cooled syrup and place the pan back in the freezer. After 2 hours, scrape the partially frozen mixture with a fork to break up the crystals. Put the mixture back in the freezer for 2 more hours (or more). Mix with a fork until slushy. Serve with mint garnish.

The rest of the story

While I was up at Tahoe, the mixture hadn't completely frozen by the time we were ready for dessert. We ate a spoonful, which was a little too syrupy, and realized that we had

the perfect ingredient sitting just outside our door. I scooped up a small bowlful of freshly fallen snow, spooned the partially frozen granita syrup over the top, mixed it in, and voila! It was perfect. It was like a lemon snow cone or slushy - very flavorful and exactly the right texture!