Home-Made Lemonade: Thirst-Quenching & Delicious

Home-made lemonade with ice and a sprig of mint

This lemonade is so popular that when I asked my friend, Michelle, if she could make it to a birthday tea I was organising, her immediate reply was: "Only if you have made, or will make, some of your delicious lemonade!" When I relayed this to the kids, they were delirious with happiness, since this lemonade is a standard party favourite in our house. The recipe is courtesy of my Uncle Kelson and Aunty Moira, who in turn, received it from a German friend). 

Despite being in the midst of birthday preparations at the time (3 birthdays in 3 weeks does seems somewhat excessive), I said to Michelle that not only would I make the lemonade, but even upload a post on how to make this delicious, and relatively healthy lemonade. 

Now, before you baulk at the amount of sugar utilised, do bear in mind that we are making a juice extract, and hence only a splash of the lemonade is required. The lemonade extract is added to cold water - or, better yet, to carbonated or soda water (thereby ensuring a deliciously sparkling drink). However, in comparison to the kinds of excessive amounts of sugar found in sodas or what we call cool-drink in South Africa, this is so much less of an offender in the sugar department. In fact, this is positively brimming with health, relatively speaking, particularly since we make sure not to denature the Vitamin C in the lemons through excessive heat. 

Since freezing does not alter vitamin C, what we tend to do is buy heaps of tiny lemons that the farmers sell, very cheaply, in large pockets at the side of the road when in season, since the lemons are under-size for sale in supermarkets. We then squeeze the juice in our Kenwood juicer attachment, freeze it in 1 litre quantities and whenever we need fresh juice, yank it out the freezer, leave it to thaw, and make up our next lot of lemon juice. 

Home-Made Lemonade Recipe 

2.5 kgs sugar (5 ½ pounds)

1.7 litres boiling water (about a kettle-full – 3 ½ pints)

2 teaspoons epsom salts

2 teaspoons citric acid 

2 teaspoons tartaric acid

1 litre freshly squeezed lemon juice (4 ¼ cups) 

Place sugar in large saucepan, add boiling water, stir until sugar is entirely dissolved. Wait until the mixture has cooled. In fact, if you have a thermometer, ensure the temperature is below 21 C (70F), or just wait until it is cold, since otherwise the vitamin C will denature. While this isn’t precisely a health drink, there’s no reason we shouldn’t extract maximum goodness out of it. 

Add freshly squeezed or defrosted lemon juice. Next, add epsom salts, citric acid and tartaric acid - which act as preservatives. Hence, they are worth-while utilising particularly since they do not make a difference to the taste of the juice, although I do anyway only store the made-up juice in the fridge. However, given the rate at which the kids drink lemon juice, we tend to skip the above, since it is drunk so rapidly, the chances of it going off are negligible. 

The above makes about five bottles of extract, each 750ml or 1 ½ pints large. In South Africa, I recycle All-Gold Tomato Sauce bottles for this purpose, they work wonderfully well. 

Home-made lemonade in recycled All-Gold Tomato Sauce bottles

For what it's worth, apart from the occasional treat, our family only does drink water or milk or tea, we never habitually stock even fruit juice in our fridge, a fact that at times mightily astounds visiting children. But while I do not advocate an entirely spartan diet, I believe that too much sugar in everything simply cannot be good for you, on the other hand, moderation in all things is not a bad injunction by which to live and a life without any treats is also not worth contemplating. My children are dedicated rooibos tea addicts, taking hot tea in flasks with a smidgeon of sugar added, to school (I had brought them up entirely without sugar in their drinks until one day they tasted their dad's tea and he informed them that of course it tasted better because it had sugar in it. His only defense in this regard was that he hadn't realised it was deliberate on my part. ??? The mind boggles.)

Anyhow, do make and enjoy this lemonade as a real treat.