Honeydew Agua Fresca

This weekend, my husband and I went to Market on the Move. It's a produce market staged in various locations throughout the month, offering up to 60 pounds of produce per $10 buy-in. This week they had extra tomatoes so we also brought home 60 pounds of tomatoes per ticket. Faced with 120 pounds of ripe Roma tomatoes, I dedicated my weekend to canning. More on the tomatoes later. More urgent were the four ripe Honeydew melons. Looking for a shelf-stable jam or jelly recipe, I came across this Agua Fresca. It turned out to be extremely easy to make since my melons were almost overripe, and it tastes oh-so-good - like apple flavored Jolly Ranchers.

My four small melons made way more strained juice than the recipe called for, probably because of their ripeness. For my adaptation I used all of the juice and dissolved 1/2 cup regular granulated sugar in 3/4 cup warm water instead of buying superfine sugar. Alternately, you can run granulated sugar through a dry blender to make it superfine. The goal is to get the sugar fully dissolved in the liquid, otherwise you don't sweeten the juice properly and you end up with granulated sugar settled at the bottom of the pitcher.

Since I had extra juice and already used 3/4 cup water for the sugar, I added an even 3 cups of water to the batch and then separated it into two pitchers to keep in the refrigerator. What was left was divvied up to the husband and kids for taste-testing. They loved it! The recipe says it will keep for a couple of days. I won't be around that long.

Original Recipe from Martha Stewart: Honeydew Agua Fresca