EVENT+RECIPE: Sugar High Friday: Ice Ice Baby!

NOTE: Do to a severe lack of being funny, there will be no attempts at devising clever rap lyrics on my part.

In the food blogging world, they often have special blog events, and they go like this: someone hosts the event. The put up a blog post with the name of the event and the rules. Generally there is a certain theme and bloggers create dishes/drinks/whatever that go with that theme, then post about it and send it in to the host, who does a round up of the entries and sometimes selects a winner, if it is a contest.

I never do these. I just have a hard time conforming to a theme, because I like to make what I like to make and I don't like to interrupt my flow to try to figure out how to make something with a certain herb or wine or whatever. But then ... THEN ...

Sarah hosted the latest edition of Sugar High Friday, in which participants create some kind of dessert. Theme was "Ice, Ice Baby." Okay ... so ... I decided to do it. Sarah is the blogger that inspired me to transition my more general blogging activities into a food blog. I was searching for a stuffed french toast recipe one day when I came across this blog that was all about food, all about L.A., and all about this woman's life. I loved reading it so much more than what I was writing in my own blog, that eventually, after much hemming and hawing, I decided to enter the world of food blogging. And I love it, so, thanks, Sarah.

I figured that since Sarah introduced me to the wonderful world of food blogging, perhaps it was only fitting that my food blog event virginity should also be taken by her. (Sarah, you stud!) So here goes ... my contribution to Sugar High Friday--Blueberry Ginger Granite:

The recipe is linked above for the curious. I chose granite because it is as easy to make as popsicles, but requires no special equipment, only a baking pan. It does require a little more attention because you have to scrape up the ice to maintain the consistency, but that's not too much trouble. At least ... as long as you have no life like me, and are spending four hours at home of an evening, watching TV and doing nothing in particular.

This was so good ... the blueberry and ginger flavors melded well together and were juicy and refreshing, just in time for the heat. I learned that the scraping is really, really important because some of my granite got scraped better than other parts of it and so the first batches to come out had a great texture, just like a restaurant granite, but then the outskirts that didn't get enough attention had hardened to much and had to be pounded, which ended up being kind of messy. The upside to this, though, is that if you mess this part up, it still tastes fabulous. You just end up sucking on chunks of flavored ice, rather than delicate flakes.

I completely recommend trying to make a granite if you would love to make your own popsicles, but don't have space in your kitchen for specialized equipment like popsicle molds. Plus, there are a million flavors that you can make granite in and it just involves getting the flavors into the proper form and then freezing them. There are tons of granite recipes out there and studying several of them should get you in good enough shape to devise your own if you're brave.