Espresso Granita Recipe

As Washingtonians, coffee is a very important staple to many of us in our daily lives. I personally am not a fan of coffee, but I thought I'd try this recipe because it looked simple and the picture made it look appetizing.

"Ingredients:
2/3 cup sugar
4 cups hot brewed espresso or double-strength brewed coffee
Sweetened whipped cream for garnish
Ground cinnamon for garnish (optional)"
(Dodge 38).

In the recipe, you're supposed to stir the mixture at 30 minutes intervals after putting it in the freezer (Dodge 38). We fell asleep after only stirring once. When we woke up, we saw that it had completely frozen over instead of just being crystallized. The recipe was ruined, but I learned that not following a recipe's instructions exactly can mess up the entire thing, even if you did everything else just right.

Question: Have you ever messed up a recipe from a careless mistake? If so, were you at least able to fix it somehow?
Citation: Dodge, Abigail Johnson. Dessert. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Print.