Soon the dog days of summer will be here and everyone will be looking for a way to escape the heat. Today we bring you a special strawberry twist to that perennial summer classic, lemonade. Lemonade at it's core is simply lemon juice and some sort of sweetener (typically sugar), today we'll take a look at a way to utilize the entire lemon fruit as well as whole strawberries to make an instant classic in your very own home.
The Recipe
Ingredients:
- About 1.25 lbs Fresh, Organic Strawberries. (Washed and cut in half.)
- Two lemons. (Washed and cut into quarters, leave rind and seeds intact.)
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup honey or pure cane sugar to taste.
Instructions:
- Add the strawberries, honey or sugar and 1 cup of water to your Vitamix blender. Blend these ingredients until liquified.
- Pour the liquified strawberry mixture into a pitcher and return the jar to the blender.
- Add the lemons and an additional 2 cups of water, leave the quartered lemons intact for this.
- Blend until the consistency is light enough for the mixture to be strained.
- Strain the lemon/water mixture into the pitcher of strawberry mixture and stir to promote a good strain.
- Taste and adjust the sweetness level if need be.
- Serve over ice and garnish with strawberry slices, lemon slices and/or fresh herbs like mint.
- OPTIONAL: if a frozen drink is desired simple add ice to the finished lemonade and return to the blender. Blend until the mixture is at the desired consistency.
- OPTIONAL: To make this into summertime cocktail simply add your choice of alcohol and stir (or add to blender before making iced drink). You can use vodka, tequila, rum or even cachaça for a sweet caipirihna.
It's really as simple as that. Feel free to share with us the special ways that you have found to make this a personalized recipe, we look forward to hearing about it!
