Granita di Mandorla, Sicilian Almond Granita
In Sicily, granita di mandorla is a summer fixture, an almond ice eaten in the shade and, in the island's own tradition, spooned over breakfast alongside a soft brioche. The classic is almost nothing: almond milk, sugar, sometimes a drop of bitter almond, frozen and scraped. Made from whole almonds and sweetened with dates, it keeps the pure almond flavor and loses only the refined sugar. The technique is the recipe here: freeze the sweetened almond milk in a wide dish and rake it with a fork every half hour, and you get the loose, snowy crystals that define a real granita rather than a hard block. It costs little more than a cup of almonds and a handful of dates, and it is a genuinely elegant thing to serve at the end of a hot-weather meal.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Almonds, blanched
- 5 wholes Medjool dates, pitted
- 1/2 Lemons, zested
- 1/4 tsp Ceylon cinnamon
Method
- Soak the blanched almonds and the pitted dates together in hot water for 30 minutes. Soaking softens the almonds so they blend to a smooth milk instead of a grit, and it plumps the dates so they melt into the mix rather than leaving specks.
- Drain, then blend the almonds and dates with 2.5 cups (600 ml) of fresh cold water and the cinnamon until completely smooth, a full two minutes. This is almond milk made from scratch, sweetened only by the dates; blend it long and hard so the ice will be creamy, not chalky.
- Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or a nut-milk bag if you want the classic silky granita, or leave it unstrained for more body and fiber. Pour it into a wide, shallow metal or glass dish, which freezes faster and more evenly than a deep one, and stir in the lemon zest.
- Freeze for about 30 minutes, until ice crystals form at the edges, then drag a fork through to break them up. Scraping at intervals is the whole method of granita: it builds loose, separate crystals instead of one solid block, so the texture stays flaky.
- Keep scraping with the fork every 30 minutes for 2 to 3 hours, until the whole dish is a bowl of fluffy, sweet ice. Serve it straight from the freezer in chilled glasses; if it sets too hard between scrapings, let it soften a few minutes and rake it again.
Nutrition
Estimated per serving: 250 calories, 7 g protein, 5 g fiber, 5 mg sodium. Computed from USDA FoodData Central reference values for the main ingredients. This is an approximation, not a laboratory measurement. How these are computed.
Cost per serving is estimated from US national-average retail prices for cheap staple forms, using BLS dried-bean prices and USDA produce prices. Prices vary by store and season, so treat it as a guide, not a receipt. How this is computed.
