Watermelon Pudding {Gelo di melone}

We’re on Letter W and W definitely works with Watermelon which I’ve been craving due to the beautifully warm weather. We settled on Watermelon Pudding because it had been on our “to make” list for a looooong time.

When I first heard of Watermelon pudding it was a few years ago at a dinner party with my extended family. A woman was raving about something called Gelo di melon she had at a local fine dining restaurant. I remember wondering at the time if that was some kind of exclusive thing. It’s not. I googled it. It’s a Sicilian pudding and it’s quite popular, actually. And delicious, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I looked around for years at dozens of recipes, and the one thing I kept seeing people mention, is that it was traditionally made with the addition of jasmine water but being as jasmine water is fairly difficult to find sold anywhere, and I don’t have jasmine flowers (or the time and patience) to steep my own, I waited to try the recipe the traditional way instead of using vanilla extract or rose extract (other things people used to substitute.)

Well I finally located a place to get jasmine extract, and I created my own jasmine water from the extract and used it to make this very delicious dessert. The kids enjoyed it a lot!