Blackberry lemonade

Heat 5 oz/140g white sugar and 4 oz/118ml water in a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir continuously and continue to cook until the sugar has dissolved, which takes around 3 minutes. Leave it to cool.

Place the blackberries and the rest of the white sugar into a blender, and blend until fully smooth. Push the mixture through a sieve afterwards, to remove solids and extract as much liquid as possible.

Combine the simple sugar syrup made earlier with the blended blackberries, remainder of the water, and lemon juice. Pour the mixture into a pitcher of your choice, over ice. Serve with sliced lemons and blackberries for garnish.

Tips & tricks

Everyone has a slightly different preference when it comes to the sweetness of lemonade. If you find the recipe above isn’t sweet enough for you, you can add in additional sugar to the final mix as needed. If you prefer a little bit of fizz in your homemade lemonade, you can also substitute the water for carbonated water for a more traditional lemonade feel. Either way, whether you add still or carbonated water, the drink will separate slightly in the pitcher, so give it a good stir before serving.

To help get the best lemon juice yield, make sure you’re not squeezing cold lemons. Another trick is to give them a good roll on the counter before attempting to juice them. This helps to break the membranes inside the lemons, and makes it a lot easier to extract more juice. For the recipe above, you’ll probably need around five fresh lemons to reach the desired amount. If you prefer your lemonade purely with lemons, then you can make a more traditional homemade lemonade and hold the blackberries.

Once you’ve had your fill of blackberry lemonade, try your hand at a few other recipes whilst this tart fruit is in season. Blackberry ice cream is another delicious recipe for the summertime. Equally, there’s no need to stop at blackberries, you can twist lemonade in a number of different ways, including apple and ginger and rhubarb, depending on what’s available at the time of year.

How to serve it

We like to serve blackberry lemonade with slices of colorful lemon rounds and additional blackberries, to nod to the flavor. You can also add a dash of mint to lift the flavors, and introduce a third color pop to the mix. Serve it over a tall glass full to the brim with ice for the best results.

Storage

Homemade lemonade will last for around up to a week in the fridge. It needs to be kept cold due to the freshly squeezed lemons and berries, but given this one is incredibly tasty, you may find it doesn’t last that long!