Or, my popsicle triumph, with melon. (Also: I spoke too soon about California cooling down enough for soup season. Live and learn.)
It has been extremely hot down here in SoCal, and I don’t want to cook with heat. I can’t take the heat, quite literally. Our entire apartment heats up with just the smallest bit of medium-high skillet action. But I’m not staying out of the kitchen. In fact, and true to form, I’m bursting with recipe ideas and channeling all my creativity/procrastinating on my book (screaming inside) by having a blast in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, this past weekend my recipes had about a 50% fail rate, as I’ve been diving into some new vegan ideas (coconut bacon? I’m sure it can be good, but mine was just… not.) and playing around with new techniques. My spring roll wrapping is coming along, but I’m pleased to say that my popsicle game is strong right now. (And apologies to folks on the East coast, who are apparently doing crisp fall days. Think of this as planning for next summer??)
Half of both a small seedless watermelon and a small honeydew gave me more than enough for my 4-pop mold. In fact, the leftovers went into a small tupperware to be turned into a melon granita, and that was very delicious, let me tell you. I ate it late at night in my dark, hot apartment, despair-watching Under Siege and hiding from my unfinished daily word count.
- 1½ cups chopped seedless watermelon and honeydew melon, or some other combo
- juice of ½ a lemon
- Blend the melon with an immersion blender. Add the lemon juice and stir well to combine. Taste for balance - add more lemon to taste. Or other stuff! Go wild. I nearly added mint, but decided against the texture in the end. For grown up popsicles, I bet some white rum would be really nice here.
- Pour into popsicle molds or, if you want granita, a tupperware container with a lid. For pops: freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight. You may need to dip mold in a bowl of warm water to loosen pops. For granita: every 2 hours or so, use a fork to scrape up the frozen edges and mix the freezing mixture into an icy rubble. Depending on how much mixture you are making, you may need to do this 3-4 times before a consistent granita is achieved.