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Chocolate Granita

Jennifer Mathews

This is a delicious, chocolatey dessert perfect for the summertime. It can also look elegant, although it’s incredibly simple. Have a kid standby to scrape the dish every 30 minutes to create a wonderful, icy texture. You aren’t looking for the creaminess of ice cream, so the recipe is very forgiving. The granita can be prepared a week ahead of time.

Tips:

  • If you have a kitchen scale now’s a good time to use it. Cocoa powder is so fine and can go everywhere, making a mess. I like to use a spoon and just spoon it into a bowl on my scale.

  • The longer you wait in-between the scraping, the icier the granita will be.

  • Don’t boil the water on the stove. It just needs to be warm enough to dissolve the sugar and cocoa.

  • Since you are not baking with this recipe, you can use any type of cocoa you have on hand.

Chocolate Granita

Recipe from Food52

Serves 4

PREP 4 hours

COOK 5 minutes

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup (63 grams) cocoa powder

2/3 cup (132 grams) granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Toppings: whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk, Greek yogurt, crème fraîche, or drizzle extra-virgin olive oil with a sprinkle of sea salt

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Heat 2 cups of water on the stove until it’s just warm, then whisk in the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt until everything has dissolved. Let cool to room temperature, then pour into an 8x8-inch baking pan.

  2. Freeze for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the perimeter is starting to freeze. Remove the pan from the freezer and use a fork to scrape the frozen edges toward the center and shuffle everything around.

  3. Freeze for another 30 minutes, then scrape and shuffle with the fork again. Repeat this—mixing every 30 minutes—until the granita is totally frozen and snowy in texture (this will take anywhere from 2 to 3 hours total, depending on your freezer). At this point, you can eat right away, or transfer to airtight containers and store in the freezer for up to a couple weeks. 

  4. When you’re ready to dig in, spoon some granita into a dish and top with whatever rich ingredient you have around—sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream, Greek yogurt, crème fraîche, or even a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil are all wonderful. A pinch of flaky salt on top is nice, too.