Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Lemonade Syrup

Yesterday's Menu- Breakfast: grits with a fried egg, Lunch: Leftovers from dinner, Dinner: Lentil vegetable soup (water with beef bouillon, lentils, onions, peppers, tomatoes), cornbread, salad (romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomato).
I made the lemon curd while my husband made cornbread for dinner. The triple batch of lemon curd used far more eggs than I planned (I don't know why but my brain refuses to acknowledge how many eggs are in a batch) so I only made a triple batch (instead of 2 triple batches). This worked out perfectly though. I got four 8 oz jars and a little leftover for dinner. I canned the jars so I can send one to a friend. The lemon curd was amazing on the cornbread.
I went on to use the remaining lemon juice in Lemonade syrup. I used only 2 cups of sugar since these lemons were rather sweet and 3 cups just seemed excessive. The flavor is great and it made about 1 1/2 quarts (I just poured into to canning jars to store in the fridge). It was still warm so we didn't try it as lemonade but as syrup it is so tasty. It's not thick enough to use on something like pancakes but I was tempted to just drink it out of the bottle. Once again I skipped the zest - all my lemon peel is now nicely frozen for future projects (like lemoncello). I used a pot to make this syrup and even heated the water/sugar mix just a little to make sure all the sugar dissolved.

Lemonade Syrup
3 cups sugar
1 cup boiling water
3 cups fresh lemon juice (about 16 lemons)
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
Measure sugar into 1½ quart bowl. Pour boiling water over sugar and stir until dissolved. Let mixture cool before adding lemon juice and zest. Blend well and store in covered jar in refrigerator. To make lemonade, blend ¼-1/3 cup lemonade syrup with ¾ cup cold water. For a sparkling, fizzy lemonade, use club soda or seltzer in place of water.

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