Granita.

Oh, my dear, sweet God of all things tasty, I have come up with the most perfect use for leftover buttermilk produced from the making of butter!  And it is called a "granita", something I have never really understood until about twenty minutes ago.

I made butter today because I was baking and we were running out.  So of course I had the usual problem: what to do with the leftover buttermilk?  There was only about a cup and a little bit produced as a by-product of the butter I made, but still, I don't really see what the point of making butter is if you're going to just buy a lot of cream and then throw away a bunch of buttermilk. Well, after much searching on the internet (and trying to think of whether I would really consider making buttermilk biscuits with them, one of the most common suggestions), I came across this recipe for granita (scroll down to the heading "Buttermilk Sherbet").  Tim took the dog for a walk, so I thought I would give it a whirl.

I used the following ingredients:

• about 1 cup plus 2 tbsp of natural buttermilk (by-product of butter making, not cultured buttermilk from a store)
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• 3 tbps lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

I mixed this with my hand blender for a minute and a half and threw it in my ice cream maker for ten minutes (there wasn't much of it so it froze quickly).  It is tangy and has a flavour that is indescribable, more like a sherbet than an ice cream.  I honestly think this was the best and most surprising recipe I've ever tried.  Tim loved it as well. I am pleased to tell you that I now know exactly what I'm going to do with the leftover buttermilk I'm going to produce when making butter!  By the way, if you don't have an ice cream maker, the recipe that I linked to describes how to make it without one.