Melon Candy

During the summer, my CSA farmer produces a plethora of melons. Thirty pound watermelons, smaller seedless watermelon, yellow watermelons, Sharlyn melons, Canary melons, Honeydew melons, Cantaloupes, and several others that I can't recall right now. When the melons come the first time, there is tremendous excitement. A bite of crisp cool watermelon in the midst of a sweltering hot summer's day can go a long ways towards making the desert heat bearable.

The next week, the melons are greeted with enthusiasm again as people wax poetic over how wonderful the first one was. This continues for another week or two until people start mentioning they still have part of last week's melon left over. Plans are hatched to invite friends and neighbors, who hopefully don't have their own CSA share, over to help savor the melon surplus. Finally, by the end of the season, members are sharing tips on how to puree and freeze the melon flesh.

That's what happened to me last summer and how I ended up with bags of Sharlyn melon puree in my freezer. I pulled one out while Sharon was in town to make prickly pear-melon smoothie. A couple of days later, I made these for my sweetie. I intended to make them again this week but I forgot about the bag and let the melon defrost completely. We have no ice cube trays in the freezer to compensate for the defrosted pulp so I decided to do something else entirely.

When I was busy processing all the prickly pear fruits months ago, I tried making a fruit leather with prickly pear syrup and pureed fresh melon. It came out beautifully. Instead of opening up a new jar of prickly pear syrup, though, I mixed the pulp with the little bit of leftover raspberry chipotle sauce. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough to sweeten or flavor the melon so I had to improvise. A spoonful of (local) honey plus a shot of homemade cherry liqueur seemed to do the trick. My dehydrating book suggests that if the mixture tastes good in the blender, it will taste good dehydrated.

The author was right. I dried the mixture overnight because it was not yet dry last night. Parts of it are leathery but other parts are brittle enough to break into chunks. This is not a problem as the crisp pieces taste like candy with just the tiniest hint of the chipotle heat. I've packaged it up and plan to take it on our road trip as a nice little snack. It will certainly be a healthier, and cheaper, option than anything we could pick up on the way.