Amaretto Raspberry Granita

I saw a picture in the newspaper yesterday how there's wild blueberries ripe for picking already even though it's still the first half on July! Because of my hectic winter, I still have a bunch of raspberries in my freezer from last summer that I never got around to using, so I thought it was time to use them up.

My friends Casey and Andy came over to play my board game Mooseopoly last night.  I created this board game as an informal education outreach tool for the Yukon Flats region of Alaska to teach the students there about moose ecology.  Basically, it's more like the board game The Game of Life than Monopoly, but the name seemed more fitting.  Casey is a ungulate ecologist focusing her PhD research on moose dynamics in Interior Alaska, so she's been curious to try her hand at Mooseopoly for awhile.

To use up some of my frozen raspberries, I made this Amaretto Raspberry Granita for dessert.  I thought about making a sorbet, but this seemed easier since I don't have an ice cream maker-- the granita is just stuck the freezer for freezing.

Amaretto Raspberry Granita

Ingredients

1 cup water

3/4 c sugar

3 c (frozen) raspberries

1 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp Amaretto liqueur

Directions

Place the water and sugar in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and dissolve all of the sugar.

Pour the lime juice over the berries.

Pour the sugar syrup over the berries.  (If using fresh berries, cool the syrup first before pouring over the berries.

Muddle the berries in the sugar syrup to release the juice from the berries.

Strain the berry sugar mixture into a shallow container.

Stir in the Amaretto liqueur.

Place the container in the freezer.  Stir periodically as it freezes (~6-8 hours).