Fresh Blender Lemonade

A few years back I had seen a recipe for making homemade lemonade that used the entire lemon pulverized in a blender. My initial search has not yet uncovered this book, but eventually I will find it again. I ended up searching on the Internet for other blender recipes for ideas and after some trial and error, this is what I came up with. We found that making the lemonade and including the peel and all worked perfectly fine, BUT there is a slight but detectable bitter taste from including the pith which can become even more pronounced as the drink sits. By removing the pith and still using the zest of one of the lemons you get the very bright citrus flavour, but not the bitterness associated with using the pith. Now that summer is just a few more months away, I'm all practiced up on making lemonade....from scratch that is. This one is pretty close to the taste of making it with frozen concentrate.....so if you don't have access to frozen concentrate, give this a try. You may need to adjust the amount of sugar to your liking as different lemons may have higher or lower sweetness levels.

This topped off our weekend breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, maple sausages and baked beans. These pancakes are made from the recipe I posted about here. Although I've written the recipe using vinegar and milk, the original called for buttermilk....which I normally do not have on hand. So just leave out the vinegar and substitute the milk with buttermilk if you find you have some buttermilk to use up....as I did from making these.

Blender Lemonade

2 large lemons
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cold water
3 additional cups of cold water

Wash all lemons well. Using a lemon zester, set aside the zest of one lemon. Cut lemons into 8 wedges each. Remove and discard seeds. Slide a sharp knife between fruit and peel to separate fruit from white pith and peel. Discard peels.

Put fruit from 2 lemons, zest from one lemon, sugar, and 1/3 cup of cold water into a blender and blend until smooth. At this point you can strain the blender contents through a sieve (it looks better when strained) and discard the pulp, or you can leave the juice unsieved and add the remaining 3 additional cups of water to it. Serve cold with lemon slices and ice.