Today I’m sharing a very pink drink that we used at the birthday party my sister and I threw for our mom. It was inspired off Pinterest (of course!), but I’m terrible at following recipes, so I made up the quantities and just made sure that it tasted sweet and delicious!
Let’s see. I had a gallon ziploc bag about 3/4 full of frozen strawberries left over from last summer. I had frozen it thinking it would be great with ice cream and nutella in the winter, but that didn’t really pan out. The strawberries were a bit mushy once thawed, and I really prefer the fresh berry more. But that made this drink the perfect vehicle in which to use the mushy thawed bits of summer!
Ingredients:
frozen strawberries – 3/4 gallon ziploc bag
13 lemons, give or take – it came out to about 2 cups of juice
simple syrup
club soda
I made the simple syrup by dissolving maybe 1 1/2 cups of sugar in 2 cups of hot water, then letting it cool. Puree the strawberries. Feel free to filter out the seeds and pulp if you’d like, and add extra sugar into the puree – also optional. Then mix the strawberry puree with the lemon juice and the simple syrup to make a thick sweet gooey fruity concentrate. To be honest, this drink was heavy on the strawberries and light on the lemonade! I had my 4 Home Goods carafes, so I split the concentrate into 4 portions, added them to the carafes, and filled the carafes with club soda.
Ok, TIP: Do the pouring of the club soda in a sink, because the bubbles + the strawberry mixture created a pink volcano. It worked better when I poured the seltzer into the bottle first, then added the strawberry mixture slowly through a funnel. It still bubbled like crazy, so go SLOWLY!
You can dilute the concentrate with as much or as little seltzer as you want. Our version was quite sweet, and I think it still would have tasted great with more seltzer, if we had another bottle to pour it in.
I think I will be using this concept again. Make a juice concentrate (or be lazy and buy the Goya fruit nectars) and add seltzer/club soda for a quick fancy looking party drink. Oh, and I imagine a bit of vodka or gin or white rum wouldn’t hurt either! mmm…Hendricks Gin with a grape concentrate plus seltzer. Or Bacardi coconut rum with a pineapple and peach nectar plus seltzer! Yowza, so many possibilities!
Sounds refreshing and I love the bright, bold color!
I just bought those napkins for my daughter’s birthday party (which isn’t until December, but I started early!). I may have to make the lemonade to go with them! 🙂
This sounds wonderful! I am going to make it right now for a lunch I am having! I stumbled across this just in time! Would you consider sharing it over at my linky party?
http://www.thetaylor-house.com/2012/04/taylor-house-thursday-3.html
This looks so good! I have a couple parties coming up I will definitely have to try this! I would love for you to share this at my link party
http://thewinthropchronicles.blogspot.com/2012/04/share-it-link-party-7.html
Looks great! I’m loving the colors, too! I’m featuring you tomorrow! XO, Aimee
I’ll be featuring this recipe tomorrow in a special strawberry post!
Melanie
ithappensinablink.com
I’m thrilled to be featuring this drink in today’s roundup! http://www.dosmallthingswithlove.com/2013/08/40-summer-cocktail-recipes.html
Wow, this looks beautiful and I’m sure is absolutely delicious!