Strawberry- Watermelon and Mint Granita

In honor of summer's arrival I thought I'd post a recipe for an icy refreshing treat to keep you cool on those roasty-toasty days of unbearable heat.

I got the idea from my food network girl crush, Giada De Laurentiis, who made a yummy looking version of this using cantaloupe and a lot more mint.

photo from foodnetwork.com

I'm not a huge fan of cantaloupe but when I saw her make it, strawberries and watermelon popped into my head. I tweaked her recipe a bit to fit my tastes so here's what I've come up with.

*Side note I use -ish in a few of  the measurements because I didn't exactly measure anything- I just eyeballed it and tasted as I went*

You'll need:
2-ish cups fresh strawberries
3-ish cups watermelon (seedless) cut into chunks
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup mint leaves (like 20 ish leaves)
1 & 1/4 cups water
1 cup sugar

So heat up your water, sugar and half your mint  in a small saucepan stirring until the sugar dissolves. Heat until boiling, reduce to simmer for about 5 min stirring occasionally. Turn off heat and let cool.

While your simple syrup is cooling. chop the tops off your berries and cut your watermelon into chunks. Toss your fruit and lemon juice in the blender along with the remainder of your mint. Strain your cooled syrup. Or you can cheat and put it in one of those plastic ketchup/mustard dispensers like I did so you don't have to strain it and you can just keep it in the fridge for use later in your iced tea or fresh lemonade, or mojito! :)

See the plastic thingy by the blender? That's what i put the simple syrup in.

Add half the syrup to the blender and blend til smooth. Taste it to see if it's sweet enough for your liking and add more to taste. I only used half the simple syrup since the fruits I chose are pretty sweet to begin with and since they are in season they were already at their peak of natural sweetness.

Pour your mixture into a 9 x 13 glass baking dish (if you use a metal dish just be sure you don't get your hands stuck to it when you take it out ha ha!) and place in the freezer and freeze until firm.

To serve use the tines of a fork to scrape the top of the frozen granita to make it have that snowy texture. Scoop into bowls and enjoy!

You can tweak it to your tastes, if you aren't a mint person leave it out. If you like strawberries more than watermelon put more in (you may not need as much simple syrup though). Heck, you can even switch fruits like I did!

Enjoy!