When I grew up, I knew my Mother had a reputation. All of our cousins would sing her praises; she was famous for her pink lemonade.
My Mother is an amazing woman who has a tonne of talent and all sorts of things that she should be known for; I’m afraid her pink lemonade probably wasn’t one of those things. We thought she had a magic touch even though we all knew it was coming from a frozen tube. I’m still not sure why we adored it so dearly though I look back and I never remember her self-promoting her talents as a tangy-tonic maker!
We’re happy to share a homemade version which has far less sugar with you today:
Many lemonade recipes call for giant amounts of sugar – it generally has about 1 cup of sugar per liter/ quart (and some commercial product calls for even more)! That’s almost 800 calories of sugar for every 4 glasses. By using 3 tablespoons of honey you are reducing that to under 200 calories and, assuming you are using a raw honey, adding an ingredient that has added health benefits compared to sugar (of course you can add or cut that to your liking as well).
This recipe is easily scalable. If you don’t have enough lemon, add more rhubarb and vice versa.
ALL NATURAL PINK RHUBARB LEMONADE RECIPE – INGREDIENTS
This recipe is to make a concentrated syrup that you add to water to make your lemonade. I found that 4-6 tablespoons (48-72 ml or approx 1/5th-1/4 of a cup) of syrup made a great lemonade. This recipe made one cup of syrup (enough for 4-5 ice-filled glasses of lemonade).
- 2 lemons
- 2 pieces of rhubarb
- 3 tablespoons of honey
- 1 cup water
ALL NATURAL PINK RHUBARB LEMONADE RECIPE – INSTRUCTIONS
- Place 1-cup of water in a saucepan and place on high heat.
- Chop rhubarb into small pieces and add to water.
- Cook rhubarb until smooth. You can use a food processor or stick blender if you’d like at this point.
- Reduce rhubarb to about 3/4 of a cup.
- Strain rhubarb through a fine sieve of cheesecloth. Solids can be used in baking or mixed with something sweet (like strawberries).
- Measure rhubarb liquid – you will have around a half cup.
- Add lemon juice until you have 1 cup of rhubarb/lemon total.
- Mix 3 tablespoons of honey with the concentrate.
- Add 4-6 tablespoons of concentrate to 1 cup of water and serve ice-cold.
Do you have any lemonade tricks or stories?