How to make homemade lemonade

Lemonade.  This refreshing drink is linked to summer.  Who doesn’t love to sit down and have a refreshing glass of lemonade?  One of my favorite treats is when you can get a glass of homemade lemonade.  There’s an amusement park we go to where you can get a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade and it is a treat.  I always thought it was hard or a pain in the butt to make but I was wrong. 

The first step I did was search on the internet on how to make lemonade.  There really aren’t a lot of lemonade recipes online.  For the most part they are all the same.  The proportions change based on the quantity of lemonade you want to make, but the instructions on how to make homemade lemonade are pretty much the same.

It’s simple. Here’s what you need for the recipe:

6 to 8 fresh lemons (enough to make 1 cup of lemon juice)
4 to 5 cups water, divided
1 cup sugar

That’s it. That is all you need to make your own homemade lemonade.

The first thing you need to do is to make some simple syrup out of the sugar and one cup of water. 

I used to be intimidated by the thought of making it – what if it burns or boils over?  But it isn’t difficult to do.  You can buy simple syrup in the store but when you see how easy it is to make I don’t think you would want to spend that money for it.  Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and cook it until the sugar is dissolved completely.  Once the sugar is all dissolved, remove the pot from the heat.

If you plan to make lemonade on a regular basis you can make a large batch of simple syrup and store it in the refrigerator in a tightly lidded container for up to one month.

While your simple syrup is cooling it’s time to juice your lemons.  Roll the lemons on a table or hard surface to get the juices flowing. 

Slice each lemon in half. 

Use a juicer to get all the juice out of your lemons.

Once the lemons have been juiced I put it through a strainer to catch any seeds or pieces of pulp.  I guess if you like pulp you can leave it in your lemonade (I don’t so I strain it out).

When you get one cup of lemon juice add it to a pitcher with the water. I used four cups of water to dilute it a bit.

Add the simple syrup and mix well.

Now you’re ready to serve your lemonade.  I added some slices of lemons to the pitcher (since I had one lemon left over) and garnished the cups this time with strawberries because my kids love strawberries.

Yummy!
 

If you leave the lemon garnish in the pitcher for a long time (as in the refrigerator) the lemons start to break apart and you get pulp and seeds.  Also you can decrease the amount of sugar in the recipe to ¾ cup if you want to watch the sugar intake.  This lemonade recipe is easy to make in quantity –the proportions are equal for the sugar and water for the simple syrup and the same amount of freshly squeezed lemon juice.  Add the additional water to taste.

Once I figured out how to make lemonade at home and that it is simple I decided to look at the ingredients on the can of powdered lemonade in my pantry. I started to do some research on it and was shocked at what I found.

Here is a list of the ingredients and what they are:

Fructose – also known as fruit sugar, a simple sugar that is found in many different fruits and vegetables. It is sweeter than table sugar.

Citric Acid – a water soluble acid found in citrus fruits and is a natural preservative . It adds an acidic or sour taste to foods.

Ascorbic Acid – also known as Vitamin C.

Maltodextrin – a food additive that is produced from corn starch and has sweet qualities that comes close to the taste of sugar. It is sometimes used to thicken foods as well.

Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate – a buffering agent used in many foods. It is also used in treating leather, removing iron stains from hides during processing. It is also used in petroleum production as a dispersant to prevent mud from clumping in oil wells. I found this information on Wikipedia.

Sodium Citrate – a chemical added to the mix to control the acidity of the product.

Magnesium Oxide – is added to the mix to prevent the mix from caking but it is also the raw form of magnesium used to make Epsom Salts.

Calcium Furmate – the calcium salt of furmaric acid.

Artificial Color – this is self explanatory. There has been some research reported on the Internet that artificial food color and dyes have a negative effect on children’s behavior (attention problems like ADD and ADHD) but the FDA states that right now their opinion is that the synthetic colors currently allowed in food are safe as long as they are made according to FDA standards. This is an article from the Los Angeles Times from 2008 that gives some more information.

Yellow 5 Lake – the artificial color approved by the FDA that gives the drink mix it’s lemony yellow color. This dye is also found in cosmetic and personal care products. Read more about this here.

Tocopherol - it is the antioxidant Vitamin E, used to preserve freshness in the product. It is a compound found in vegetable oils.

Oh yes, and less than 2% natural flavor.

What are the ingredients in homemade lemonade? Water, sugar and lemons.  That’s it.  After learning what all these ingredients really are I’m not sure I’ll serve the powdered lemonade drink mix to my children again.

I am not a nutritionist but I wanted to get an idea of what the calorie count would be on a cup of my homemade lemonade. I got six servings out of the recipe, about 8 ounces each. There are 774 calories in a cup of sugar and that divided by six is 129. Freshly squeezed lemon juice has between 1 and 7 calories per ounce less if you are using fresh, more if you are using frozen. To split the difference I’ll say 4 calories per ounce and I used 8 ounces in the recipe. That means 5.34 calories per serving. So each serving of my homemade lemonade recipe (very unscientifically derived) is about 135 calories. Not a low calorie treat, but this would be OK once in a while. If I was to cut back on the sugar I’d be able to save some calories there.

It isn’t hard to find out how to make your own homemade lemonade. Give it a try sometime because there isn’t anything quite like the taste of freshly squeezed lemonade on a hot summer day!