When Life Gives You Lemons...

My college roommate, Tammy, heard that I spent yesterday afternoon making strawberry lemonade with my amazing goddaughter yesterday afternoon and wrote in to ask for the recipe, adding that she and her mom are faithful Al Dente readers. (Thanks ladies!)

As luck would have it, I've been working on a strawberry lemonade tutorial all evening featuring my aforementioned four-year-old goddaughter Marisol. (Bear with my feeble first attempt at movie editing with iMovie. Fairly intuitive, but I have a way to go on the learning curve.)

Marisol and I got to spend some q.t. together yesterday. Shortly after she arrived we ventured into the backyard, and she made a beeline for the meyer lemon tree and starting picking. A woman on a mission! 

When faced with a basketful of lemons, Marisol and I say make pink lemonade!

Homemade All-Natural Pink Lemonade

Ingredients for simple syrup:

1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Ingredients for the lemonade:

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (4 to 6 medium lemons)
3 to 5 fresh whole strawberries, cleaned and hulled
3 to cups cold water
1 cup ice cubes

Directions:

1. Make simple syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved completely. The liquid should be clear. Turn off heat and cool. [By using simple syrup instead of straight up sugar, you will avoid having a mound of undissolved sugar at the bottom of your lemonade pitcher, the sweetness will distribute throughout.]

2. Use a juicer to extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons, enough for one cup of juice.

3 Add the juice and the sugar water, one cup of ice, and the strawberries to a blender. Blend add 3 to 4 cups of cold water, to desired taste. (Add more lemon juice if you find it to be too sweet).

4. Serve over ice.

Serves: 6

We used the kid-friendly juicer attachment on our Cuisinart to make the lemonade, but the old school method works just as well.

Related equipment:

Cuisinarts
Juicer appliances
Juicer attachments
Manual juicers
Pitchers

Recipe credit: StellaCadente* and Marisol G.
Video credit: StellaCadente*
Music credit (for video): Ziggy Marley
Special thanks to Monica and Joe for letting me share the video

--StellaCadente*

Follow me on Twitter @pomodorista

Comments

[CindyW on May 04, 2010 at 02:14 PM]

What a cutie! When she flashes those dimples, my heart just melts. :)

Your video makes me wish I had a sidekick with me to make lemonade.

[StellaCadente* on May 04, 2010 at 05:51 PM]

@CindyW: Awww! She is definitely a cutie. And she is so focused when she's in the kitchen. She is one of my best assistants!

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[B on June 18, 2010 at 07:46 AM]

I am SO making this today! Will post pictures!