Sunday, February 22, 2009

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.

8 comments:

Gecko said...

Yummo! Homemade Lemonade, can you believe I've never tried it? Yes...I live under a rock, LOL!

I would LOVE for Annie to come and visit you (as long as she's still going!). I'll add you to the list on her blog!

Anonymous said...

Yay!! Thank you. I'll add lemons to my shopping list today & will definately be trying this!!

LittleRed said...

I hope it works out well for you. When we get out of our cold snap, I'll make some more as I have quite a few lemons left:)....and I am looking forward to my visitor!

Lisa said...

I was wanting some fresh lemonade the other day, I really need to go to the grocery store so I can make some. Thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting on the giveaway! I have been a follower of yours for a while now...I'm just bad about commenting. :)Lisa

Unknown said...

Hi, I did a google search for a recipe to make lemonade in a blender and I used this. I didn't have any sugar, so I used honey, although I will use sugar next time, and I also was a bit too lazy to seperate the lemon itself from the white film in between the fruit and the skin, so I would say the lemonade had a bit more bitter taste to it, and I added more water to take away from that some....all in all however, it is very tasty and my 4 girls and my hubby really liked it! The girls helped me so that was a plus!

Thanks for sharing with the world!

Unknown said...

Hi, I did a google search for a recipe to make lemonade in a blender and I used this. I didn't have any sugar, so I used honey, although I will use sugar next time, and I also was a bit too lazy to seperate the lemon itself from the white film in between the fruit and the skin, so I would say the lemonade had a bit more bitter taste to it, and I added more water to take away from that some....all in all however, it is very tasty and my 4 girls and my hubby really liked it! The girls helped me so that was a plus!

LittleRed said...

Thanks for stopping by! We are slowly coming into spring and soon we'll be ready to try this again....maybe next time with limes??

Melissa Nicole said...

Oh my lanta! This is perfect! The taste is to the T :)