Ah, I received another small lemon fortune this week and blackberries were on sale- time for some lemonade! I had been wanting to make blackberry lemonade of a long time now. I used to always get the Einstein’s blackberry lemonade with my bagel all the time when I was in college and I’ve been thinking about it periodically ever since. I’m sure that was made with some kind of artificial syrup, but it sure tasted good! Anyway, I used my traditional lemonade recipe and added some fresh blackberry puree. I ended up adding a bit extra water than normal, maybe an additional cup. Everyone’s lemonade tastes are different, so I would suggest altering it with more simple syrup, more water, or more lemon juice as necessary.

I lot of berry lemonade recipes do not call for de-seeding the fruit, but I much prefer a smooth puree. To make the puree smooth, simply pour it through a fine mesh sieve, moving it around as necessary. It is more time consuming, but you get a much better end result.

I also think that if you were serving this to guests, it might be pretty to pour a small amount of puree in the bottom of each glass and then top with lemonade. Each guest can then stir their own. It’s just an idea to make it more visually appealing

Blackberry Lemonade (serves 4-6)
Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
6-7 cups water, divided
6 oz of blackberries, pureed and de-seeded
1 cup lemon juice, from 5-6 lemons
blackberries, for garnish

In a small saucepan, dissolve sugar in 1 cup of water. Chill mixture in the fridge while you juice your lemons and make your puree.

In a pitcher, combine lemon juice, blackberry puree, simple syrup (the sugar/water mixture) and 5 cups of water. Add the additional cup of water to taste. Serve over ice with blackberry garnishes.