Watermelon Granita

I never would have made watermelon granita, not in my entire life.

BUT, when the Kosher Connection group of bloggers decided to do a recipe swap — prepare a recipe from someone else’s site — and some automatic machine or other chose whose site we had to get the recipe from, it turned out that the pick for me was Tribes-A-Dozen, run by the very talented Leah Hadad, whose specialty is baking.

In fact, her site promises (and delivers) recipes for “the kind of bread your great-grandmother used to make (she of the handed down recipe).”

Not only does Leah have some awesome recipes on her site, she now sells Voila! Hallah bread mixes.

I bake sometimes, usually pie or banana bread or muffins. Not yeast breads. That takes a special talent and time and I don’t have either. Except for maybe challah, which is also Leah’s ultimate specialty.

My grandma did hand down a great, award-winning recipe for challah and frankly I can’t imagine making a different one. And I couldn’t make and match the other breads on her blog. So I searched around for something else and found her recipe for Watermelon Granita, which is not only lightly sweet and great tasting, it is also perfectly refreshing on a hot summer day, and if you live near me in the northeast and living it out in one of the worst heat waves ever, is a splendiferous thing to eat.

I followed Leah’s recipe for Watermelon Granita, but I changed her call for some vanilla sugar into a small amount of extract. I am also presenting it here edited in the style I use. This stuff is really a terrific treat, a summertime special and I’m kind of glad I went through this process to find, make and enjoy a recipe that I never otherwise would have made.

The recipe is below. And btw, if you want to enter a contest to win a beautiful and useful Emile Henry product (Bread Cloche OR Dutch Oven) that goes hand in hand with our recipe swap, click here.