Easy Lemon Granita

Lemon granita is an easy, icy lemony Italian treat. This is a refreshing dessert made from lemon juice, water, and sugar.

Lemon granita is a frozen fruit juice dessert, very similar to a fresh, flavorful snowcone. This recipe doesn’t require any stovetop work or an ice cream maker, or even a cone.

You’ll just need a hand juicer, ice cube trays and a muddler (or the handle of a wooden spoon) to punish those granita cubes into submission. (If making it boozy, the vodka makes the cubes softer and easier to smush). Once you're done, you have an easy lemon granita that is sure to cool you off on those hot summer days.

Ingredients:

• Lemons - You will need lemons to get the fresh lemon juice. So these can be lemons that have the zest removed.
• Water - We like to use filtered water
• Sugar - Granulated white sugar is easiest here for how it dissolves in the water and lemon juice.
• Vodka (optional) - Vodka is definitely optional in this recipe! But it's nice to have the option to make it a little more boozy, and the alcohol content prevents the ice cubes from freezing as hard, so they are a little easier to smush.

What is granita?

Granita is a Sicilian dessert made from water, ice cubes, and fruit. It's related to Italian ice or sorbet. Typically lemon granita is made by scraping a fork over the granita several times during the freezing process to agitate the mixture and form ice crystals.

That is a delicious way to do it, but does require time for the scraping. Our version freezes the mixture into ice cubes, then smashes them for a delicious texture and flavor, without the scraping. It's a more hands-off, easy way of making this granita.

Either way, this dessert from Sicily is a delicious and refreshing way to beat the summer heat.

Other variations:

• Lime + coconut rum- Substitute out the lemons for limes and the vodka for some coconut rum for a truly tropical granita.
• Grapefruit - Grapefruit can be great and refreshing in a granita! If making a grapefruit granita, you may want to add an extra ¼ cup sugar to the mixture, since grapefruit can be so bitter. And if you want to make it Paloma-esque, switch out the vodka for tequila!
• Watermelon - Who doesn't love watermelon in the summer? Blend up some watermelon and use in place of the lemon juice.

How to make lemon granita:

First, take lemons and juice them until you get one cup of lemon juice.

Then, add all your ingredients -- lemon juice, sugar, water, and vodka to a non-reactive bowl.

What does this mean? It means you want a bowl that is ceramic, glass, pyrex, or stainless steel. Reactive bowls like cast iron and aluminum can react to the acidity in lemon, so you don't want to use those in this recipe.

We love to use a four cup measuring cup because it makes it easy to pour!

Stir, stir, stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Pour into ice cube trays and pop into the freezer.

Once the cubes are frozen, you can pop them out and store in a ziplock bag in the freezer. When ready to serve, you'll take a few cubes out and smush them with the handle of a wooden spoon or a cocktail muddler.

You could also pop them into a blender for a smooth texture similar to shaved ice.

Smush, smush, smush until broken up and delicious.

Garnish the lemon granita with something pretty like fresh mint leaves or basil leaves if you want. You can also top with some fresh lemon zest.

Otherwise, just dive into the icy goodness!

Looking for more lemon recipes? Try these!