When we were kids, my sister and I often thought having a lemonade stand would be a fantastic idea.
Fortunately, my parents were able to convince us that two kids sitting on the side of a dirt road out in the country probably wouldn?t drum up much business.
With that said, we still made a lot of the sweet stuff in the summers, often depleting large cans of Country Time Lemonade.
Recently, with my stash of cherries almost depleted after baking cherry coconut bars and an awesome chocolate cherry cake, I decided to toss the remainder into what turned out to be an almost addicting-ly delicious, from-scratch cherry lemonade.
I got the recipe from the blog ?Mom Endeavors.?
The one warning I?ll give you is that this recipe makes a lot of lemonade. I did not have a good plan for how I would store all of mine at first and ended up having to put the overflow into some rinsed out two-liter bottles. You can find the original post at momendeavors.com/2014/02/?fresh-cherry-lemonade-recipe.html.
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Cherry Lemonade
Ingredients
1 cup pitted cherries (fresh or frozen)
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 cups lemon juice (fresh or bottled)
4 cups ice cubes
5 cups water
Directions
In a small bowl, mix the cherries with one-quarter cup sugar and set aside while preparing the rest of the ingredients.
Pour the remaining two cups of sugar, the lemon juice, the cherries and the ice cubes into a blender.
Blend until the mixture is smooth.
Pour the mixture into a large pitcher and stir in the five cups of water.
Store in the refrigerator.
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I ended up only adding about three cups of water and then watering each glass down just a smidgeon, but it all depends on your taste as to how much water you want to add.
I also think this might be good watered down with some lemon-lime soda or ginger ale instead of water, too. It might actually make for a nice party punch. (If you try it, let me know if it was good.)
Also, you?ll want to stir the pitcher if you let it sit too long, because there will be some cherry sediments that will collect on the bottom.
This was a great way to use up the rest of our cherries and, unfortunately, what was left of the summer, but I suppose if I have to say goodbye to this season and move into fall, I?m not disappointed to get to do it with a nice, cold glass of lemonade.
When not helping husband Joey with newspaper work, Lindsey teaches speech, debate and forensics at Haven High School. She can be reached at lindseyclarion@gmail.com.
