As much as I love to curl up with my favorite mug in the winter with hot tea or hot chocolate, I love the refreshing drinks that go hand in hand with summer. I don’t count Labor Day as the end of summer. I enjoy every summer sip and bite until the first day of fall. I don’t necessarily wear summer things until then- I wore a long sleeve shirt and sweater today- but I will fill my stomach with summer’s last bit of produce.
If you are like you realize that you have 15 days until the first day of fall. That includes 2 full weekends for you to kick back and relax with a lemonade before the full onslaught of pumpkins, cider, and Halloween candy. Don’t even get my started on how I keep seeing CHRISTMAS candy in the stories!!
The combination of blueberries and lemons go together very well. I love them in desserts so in a drink the same would be true, right? Correct! The blueberries add a nice naturally sweet flavor to offset the tart lemons.
I decided to incorporate the blueberries into the lemonade by making blueberry puree ice cubes. I love when making an icy cold drink and making ice cubes part of the drink, not just something that keeps the drink cold. Also, I don’t want to use just regular ice cubes that will water down the drink. The blueberry ice cubes came out very well, but one thing that I noticed was that they broke apart very quickly. This was fine since I was drinking the lemonade right away. If you plan on letting the drink hang around for a bit, I suggest that you make the ice cubes out of store bought blueberry juice and adding some frozen blueberries to the glass.
edit– right after I tweeted this post I got a tweet mentioning that vodka should accompany this lemonade. Umm, how did I forget to mention that? Well, obviously, vodka would make this blueberry lemonade even more delightful. Plus it gives you options… a regular vodka or you can get creative and use a flavored one. have fun and enjoy.
Blueberry Lemonade
Serves 8
Ingredients
- 1 pint of fresh blueberries
- 7 lemons
- 2 cups sugar
- 7 cups of water
- Blend the blueberries and then strain the puree. Pour the puree into an ice cube tray and freeze until solid.
- Squeeze all the lemons.
- Combine the sugar and the lemons into a large pitcher.
- Add water to pitcher and mix well.
- Serve the glass of lemonade with blueberry ice cubes and a slice of lemon.
I made a blueberry lemonade last year but never thought to consider just adding frozen flavored ice cubes, that’s easy and fun 🙂