All you need is your favourite fruit, some sugar, water as well as a little patience and your homemade “water ice” is almost complete. What could you enjoy more on hot summery days?! And everyone in the family can make their own flavour.
Granita: ice cream for breakfast
Over a thousand years ago, the Arabs brought the idea for ice cream made of fruit and water to Sicily. The rich islanders appreciated the refreshment and sent nivaroli, snow collectors, to Etna in winter. They stored the snow deep down in the ground and preserved it as a block of ice. Mixed with some fruit juice, such as from local lemons, honey and flowers, the scraped ice became a forerunner of granita. Today, Sicilians enjoy eating this sorbet-like ice cream for breakfast during summer: lemon, almond or coffee-flavoured and served with a brioche bun.
How the stick found its way into the ice cream
As so often with good inventions: coincidence played a role here. According to the story, in the winter of 1905, Frank Epperson, an eleven-year-old from California, was preparing lemonade for himself. The drink was not cold enough for the boy, so he put it on the outside of the windowsill and forgot about it. The following day, the lemonade was completely frozen and the stirrer was still in it. Frank pulled the stirrer out of the glass with the frozen lemonade, tried it and thought the result was delicious. Later, as an adult, he applied for a patent on it.
📖 Recipe
Basic recipe for fruit ice lolly
Ingredients
- 400 g fruit , 1
- 100 g fruit , 2
- 80-100 ml water
- 80-100 g sugar
- ½ juice lemon
Instructions
- For the basic recipe, boil the water with the sugar and let it cool down. If your fruit of choice is particularly sweet, make sure to adjust the quantity of sugar. Mix the fruits separately, add some lemon juice into both and mix proportionally with the sugar syrup. In order not to change the flavour of the fruit, make sure the syrup is always cold before mixing it together with the fruit.
- If you want multi-coloured ice cream, fill one type of fruit juice after the other into the forms. But take care if you do not want the colour to mix, freeze for about 10 minutes after adding each type of fruit. Once done, the filled forms are placed in the freezer for 40 minutes. Then insert a wooden or plastic handle. Freeze for at least another 3 hours and enjoy ice-cold!
- Tips for ice-makers: it is easiest to puree fridge-cold fruit. If you own a smoothie maker or juicer, use it for this recipe. And fruit with seeds, such as raspberries or kiwis, should be pureed. If you do not have any ice cream forms, you can also use plastic cups. Plain wooden shish kebab skewers make perfect ice cream sticks if you shorten and use two for each ice lolly.
Nutrition
Delicious fruit flavours and great colour combinations can be created by using combinations like raspberry and kiwi or peach and blueberry. Different types of melon, such as water melon or honeydew melon, taste delicious as well, and their colours resemble a beautiful summer sunset. Mint leaves also go perfectly with melon. For a tasty little surprise, add small pieces of fruit to the ice cream.
Citrus fruit ice cream:
For a lemon ice cream, take 400g of lemon juice. For an orangey flavour, use the juice of 10 oranges. In the sugar syrup (according to the recipe), the peels of 3 organic lemons are cooked as well for both the lemon and the orange flavour. For mandarin ice cream, you need the juice of 15 mandarins, some lemon juice and for the syrup the skins of 1 lemon and 3 mandarins.
Fruit ice and frozen yoghurt
are a delicious combination. You can also make colourful ice lollies with them. For the frozen yoghurt, mix 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 50g of sugar with 500g of yoghurt (100% fat). Then, alternate the fruit puree as described above and fill yoghurt into the moulds. Again, remember to freeze for 10 minutes after every flavour.
Sorbet instead of ice lollies:
If you prefer to eat your ice cream with a spoon instead of licking it, you can also prepare a sorbet. For this, you need 1 egg white and 3 tablespoon of (icing) sugar, which you then beat together until stiff. Prepare the fruit ice cream as described above according to the basic recipe, but use a little less sugar. Do not put the ice cream in the freezer, but in an ice cream machine. Once the fruit ice cream is almost frozen, stir in the beaten egg whites. This makes the sorbet wonderful and smooth.
Buon appetito and enjoy your summer!
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