“all i need is a gold mine”

May 15, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary 

it could be that i’m shaking because of the enormous amount of caffeine and sugar i just slurped and crunched in the kitchen while the boys leapt crazy without the use of drinkable stimulants.

but maybe i’m a little giddy and twitchy because i love the entire process of the espresso granita that martha stewart told me about just yesterday when i opened the door to retrieve the mail and had the doldrums of the monday banished away with the magic of the june issue of summer magazine goodness.

it’s fun to make! and even better to eat or drink or chip away at. hooray for iced espresso beverages.

espresso granita for six (not hardly)

2 cups strong brewed espresso coffee

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 cup heavy whipping cream

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate shaved into curls

while coffee is still warm, stir in 3 tablespoons of the sugar until it is dissolved. blend with the water. pour the mixture into a 13-by-9 freezer-safe glass dish. place in the freezer. every thirty minutes, rake the surface with a fork to form a granular texture. this part should be ready in two hours. whip the cream with the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar. scoop some granita into a glass or bowl. top with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. serve immediately.

of course, i did it all differently, using the coffee that i brewed for the afternoon that was caramel flavored and not espresso at all. i also put it in a freezer-safe glass bowl, so it took all afternoon scratching at it when i remembered, and froze during the night so it had to defrost a bit and be scratched into graininess later. we don’t keep heavy cream on hand (or chocolate for the purpose of shaving into curls), so i whipped sugar with two percent milk and poured it on top of the granita and that was that.

next time i will use less sugar because i don’t normally sugar up my coffee and, while it is good, i think it would be better a bit more bitter.

“words cannot describe,” i begin to write about this drink delicious, but i stop myself because, surely there are words. i just can’t think of any because my brain, fueled by bean and cane, is zipping through the catalog of my vocabulary unable to stop, stoop, consider.

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