Coffee Granita

What To Do With All That Extra Coffee?

Every morning I have lots of extra coffee and I usually throw it away. So today I decided to look and see what you could do with extra coffee. I came across this real easy, yummy looking recipe. Sorry I can't say I've tried it but am posting it here because I thought my discovery today was interesting. Um, and truth be known I don't have any heavy cream in the house today. So I also looked up, embarrassed to say, how do you make cream? Look below I am still blushing thinking of how did I not know that. Dairy cow farmers please excuse my non-dairy farm city girl ignorance. Well, if you give this a try let me know. I will be trying it just as soon as I can get myself some cream from the store.

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. espresso
• 1/2 c. regular coffee
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. heavy cream

Directions:

1. Mix the coffee, espresso and sugar together, preferably while the coffee's still hot.

2. Taste the mixture. It should taste like extra-strong, extra-sweet coffee.

3. Pour the mixture into a shallow container and place it in the freezer, uncovered.

4. Meanwhile, chill the cream well.

5. As a film freezes on top of the container, break it up and stir it with a fork every 20 minutes or so. This step will create the granita's characteristic grainy texture.

6. As the mixture freezes it will harden faster, so stir it more often to keep it from freezing too solid. The final texture should resemble chipped ice.

7. Whip the cream until frothy but pourable - just before serving.

8. Spoon the granita into small cups and top with dollops of the lightly whipped cream.
   
   

If You Don't Have Cream

Here is my emberrassing discovery today, you can not make cream. Cream is actually the fat that naturally occurs from cows milk. It usually is separated in the process of making milk for our consumption. You can read more about it at this great site called OChef where you can post your vexing cooking questions. In his Q&A article titled, Is There A Recipe For Cream?, he states,

"And like salt, chicken livers, and apples, it is not the product of another recipe, it is a naturally occurring food that you cannot make yourself — it is an ur-ingredient, if you will. In modern milk production, cream is separated from milk with the use of a centrifuge called a separator. In less technical times, milk was poured into shallow pans and the cream rose naturally to the top. In Britain, cream that was skimmed from the top after 12 hours was called cream or single cream. Cream that wasn't separated until 24 hours had elapsed was called double cream"