My friend Laura introduced me to homemade granita earlier this spring. I hadn’t heard of or tried granita, but I totally fell in love with the bowl of basil + lime flavored ice.

So, last week when my younger sister was here visiting I decided to take Laura’s directions and try making our own flavorful concoction. Although the ingredients and directions are simple, granita is a tedious process. You need to make sure you’ll be at home for at least 5-6 hours so that you can stir the mixture every 30 minutes. But I promise, it’s so worth it in the end.

Ingredients:

3 cups water

3/4 cup white sugar

1 dozen strawberries

1 large lemon

Directions:

Core & half the strawberries, place in blender and puree until smooth. Cut lemon in half and juice well—-take a knife or fork and use it to remove the pulp from inside the lemon as well. Remove lemon seeds. Stir together the sugar and water, bring to a boil, allow to simmer for 1 minute, then set aside and let it cool down. Once its cool (I wanted 20 minutes) stir in the strawberry + lemon. Dump the entire concoction into a glass casserole pan….I say the bigger the better (whatever fits in your freezer).

Then set a timer or alarm. Every 30 minutes you’ll need to take the pan out o the freezer and stir it using a fork. 4(ish) hours later you’ll have a beautiful pan of granita!