Recipe: Campari Granita — Recipes from The Kitchn |Cooking With Amanda

Simple and made ahead, this granita has the requisite bright red color for a Valentine's dessert. Its bittersweet taste is satisfying. This ice cleanses the palate and aids your digestion, leaving you ready for any post-prandial fun.

Campari and orange juice is an excellent aperitif, and a good introduction to bitter. The same combination, though in different proportions to the cocktail, can be frozen into a granita. The advantage of this kind of ice is that you don't need any fancy machines; you simply need to stir the mixture during the freezing process to break up the ice crystals. The result is a granular ice. If you prefer more bitterness, try the grapefruit version below.

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Testing Notes

Although the recipe calls for a metal pan, I used a plastic storage container of the same size and it worked just fine. Instead of a spoon, I scraped the mixture with a fork instead and it produced gorgeous flakes of granita.

- Christine, February 2015

Campari Granita

Serves 4 to 6

1 cup (250 ml) strained freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup (125 ml) Campari
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Stir the orange juice, Campari, and lemon juice together, then pour into an 8-inch (20-cm) square metal pan. Place in the freezer. Stir the mixture with a spoon every hour or so to break it up into large ice crystals. If you forget to stir the mixture and it freezes solid, don't panic. To return the granita it to its granular texture, break it into chunks and pulse briefly in the food processor. To serve, spoon the granita into chilled glasses.

Recipe Variation

Replace the orange juice with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and add 2 tablespoons (25 grams) superfine (caster) sugar.

Reprinted with permission from Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan, copyright © 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House LLC.

(Image credits: Kimberley Hasselbrink; Ten Speed Press)