Perfect Lemonade

Spud loves lemonade. 

He’s 5, so he likes basically any kind of lemonade.  The stuff made from powder mixes, the weird stuff from soda machines, and homemade.

So I made it my goal to make the best (and easiest) homemade lemonade I could.

The best thing to do is to start out with a simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water), so avoid any undissolved sugar.

Ok tangent – who grew up trying to mix kool-aid in a deep pitcher with a wooden spoon and the sugar would.not.mix!?

Hubs & I were laughing over that childhood memory just the other day!

Anyhow, simple syrup makes it so that never happens!  Plus I like to infuse my simple syrup with the lemon zest for an extra burst of lemon!

One last thing – fresh squeezed it great and all, but at most, I usually have only about half fresh squeezed lemon juice and the rest is bottled – I just don’t have the patience to squeeze all those lemons!  Basically either way (fresh squeezed or bottled) this lemonade is going to be fantastic!

Perfect Lemonade

Adapted from Simply Recipes

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

Zest from 1-3 lemons

1 cup lemon juice (freshly squeezed or bottled)

4 cups ice

6-8 cups water

1-2 tbsp raspberry syrup (optional)

Place the water, sugar, and zest into a small saucepan over medium heat.  Heat and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Place the lemon juice and ice into a large pitcher.  Strain the simple syrup into the pitcher (discard zest).  Top with water (more or less, depending upon how strongly flavored you like your lemonade).  Stir in raspberry syrup to make pink lemonade, if desired.