The 2nd recipe as part of our “make more homemade drinks this summer” movement will be a homemade peach lemonade.
As you recall a few weeks back, I have decided to make more smoothies/drinks/slushies myself this summer rather than looking back when summer is over, wishing I would’ve made a gazillion different things I wanted to make when summer first started.
Instead of just “planning” things this summer, I’m determined to execute all these “plans”. Nothing like getting off your butt and getting stuff done, right?
I started things off with a sparkling raspberry limeade. This week, since peaches are in season (and super cheap at the moment), a peach lemonade sounded like the perfect idea.
- 4 cups water
- 2 cups peaches, coarsely chopped
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 cup lemon juice
- 1-1.5 cups water
- In a medium saucepan, combine the water, sugar, and peaches. Heat until a boil, then turn down heat and let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes.
- Pour mixture into a blender, blend until smooth. **see Note below*
- Pour blended mixture into a saucepan, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.
- Strain the peach puree into a pitcher, pressing with a wooden spoon to get the most liquid out of it. Discard the solids.
- Add lemon juice and 1 cup water. Taste. If it still tastes too concentrated, dilute with an additional 1/2 cup water.
- Serve over ice and garnish with additional peach wedges if desired.
- Do NOT close the lid entirely when blending the hot liquid. You'll need to vent the lid to allow steam to escape (and to prevent an "explosion" of hot sticky peach juice).
- After placing the lid back onto the blender, remove the little clear center piece from the lid.
- Fold a kitchen towel a few times into a square, large enough to cover up where the clear center piece used to be.
- Secure the towel on the lid by placing one of your hands over it. Blend.
First, my knife decided to attack me as I’m chopping up the peaches. I’ve been cooking since I was a teenager, and I’ve only cut myself twice. Not a bad record, I’d say, but every time it happens, it’s almost like my eyes see it coming, but my brain is too slow to send signals to my hand, telling it to stop.
I guess you can see it three ways: 1) either my brain is slow to send signals to my hand, 2) somehow my motor neurons are disconnected to my brain and acts on its own accord, or 3) I just have very bad hand-eye coordination. My vote is for Option #3.
Secondly, I learned that when you’re blending hot liquids in a blender, do NOT close the lid entirely unless you want hot liquids all over your counters, toaster, floors, mixer, or all over yourself. In my defense, I’ve only used the blender for making smoothies in the past, and no one ever told me that you need to vent the lid to allow steam to escape.
Well, that would’ve been nice to know.
I ended up with hot, sticky, peach & sugar water concentrate all over my counters and floors and gave myself a nice little burn on the hand that just endured the knife attack 10 minutes prior to the peach explosion.
Once I took off the little clear center piece of my lid and covered the lid with a kitchen towel instead, it worked out perfectly.
So note to self (and my lovely readers): when you’re blending hot liquids in the blender, make sure you take the center piece of the lid off and cover it with a kitchen towel instead. If it’s tolerable, I’d advise you to secure the towel on the lid by placing one of your hands over it.
Even though there were quite a few obstacles I had to deal with while making this recipe, the end product turned out to be super yummy. It’d be a good complement to any summer cookout.
For me, however, I think it’ll take some time before I’m brave enough to revisit this recipe after all the abuse my body had to go through just to make this lol.
Enjoy!
