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Do you know anyone addicted to soda? I had many unhealthy habits in my younger years but fortunately soda consumption was not one of them. My husband still drinks it in moderation, but he has almost completely kicked the habit. For Christmas I bought him the Sodastream. So far he is pretty happy with it. We have been working on some good “healthy” soda recipes these past few months. Our goal is to make a healthy ginger soda, but that’s a work in progress, (most ginger sodas have a lot of sugar in it). An idea for a strawberry lemonade recipe showed up in my Facebook news feed so I decided to give it a try.
Strawberry lemonade concentrate
Organic strawberries (21)
Organic lemons (2) – juiced (1/2 cup lemon juice)
4 tbs organic honey
mason jar/weights
1. Wash the strawberries and remove the green tops.
2. Juice the lemons. I did this by hand and I got approximately 1/2 cup of lemon juice.
3. Slice up the strawberries. (If you have more surface area, you will extract more flavor). I actually sliced them as I went so I could count them. My first row had 7 sliced up strawberries.
4. Add the 2 tbs honey, and 1/4 cup lemon juice.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
6. Top it off with 7 sliced up strawberries. Put some sort of weight on the strawberries to keep them under the juice.
7. Let it sit for 24 hours.
To make the soda, I added one tablespoon of concentrate to 6 ounces of homemade soda water, (with the Sodastream). If you don’t have a Sodastream you can just add the concentrate to soda water. Or, you can let this mixture sit in the fridge for 3-5 days, and use it to make a strawberry lemonade frozen treat.
I didn’t add any additional sugar or honey to the soda, just the concentrate. We thought it was sweet enough. My daughter likes it because “it’s fizzy”. Too bad it can’t be kept in the fridge longer, the taste gets better with time. I will have to try this concentrate with water kefir so it can “keep” longer in the fridge.
Instead of eating the strawberries leftover from the berry infusion, I decided to freeze them and try an experiment. (It would be a shame to waste them. I love strawberries but mushy strawberries didn’t sound very appealing to me).
When the strawberry lemonade is gone, (or after 3-5 days), place the remaining berries into a freezer friendly container. (I put it all in one container, but next time I will use an ice cube tray. It will be easier). Then just blend it in a high speed blender, (like a Vitamix). That’s it. It is already sweetened from the honey and the natural sugars in the strawberries. My daughter absolutely loved it! Such an easy treat for the upcoming hot summer days. (Wishful thinking right now, I am so ready for warm weather).
If you try the recipe please let me know how it turned out for you.
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