There are other fun ways to mix up this mint lemonade recipe: like making it sparkling or spiked! Here are a few fun variations:
Mint Lemonade
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This mint lemonade recipe is easy and refreshing! The cooling, herbaceous notes of mint pair perfectly with the zing of lemon.
Here’s a beverage that’s ideal for summer sipping: Mint Lemonade! This recipe is ideal for when you have loads of this fresh herb on hand. The cooling, herbaceous notes of the mint are a perfect pair with the acidic pop of the lemon. What could be more refreshing? It’s simple to whip up and perfect for parties and entertaining. Or, make a big pitcher to drink off of all week! Here’s our master method.
Ingredients for mint lemonade
This mint lemonade recipe skips making a simple syrup on the stovetop, and goes right to the blender. In fact, all you need to do is blend mint and sugar, then mix it with lemon juice to form lemonade. As a note, this recipe is best in summer you’ve got fresh mint to spare. It calls for 1 cup mint leaves, which can get expensive if you’re buying store-bought out of season. Here’s what you’ll need for this recipe:
- Fresh mint
- Lemons
- Sugar
How to make mint lemonade (basic steps)
It’s very easy to make your own homemade lemonade! The most time consuming part? Juicing the lemons! Here are the basic steps for how to make this mint lemonade (or jump to the recipe below for quantities):
- Juice the lemons. Using a press juicer is the quickest way to juice lemons: it gets out the most juice and saves your fingers from tiring out from squeezing. The next best choice? A handheld citrus juicer.
- Blend the mint, sugar and water. Give it a whiz in the blender.
- Double strain it with a fine mesh strainer! This is the important part. You’ll want to strain the liquid twice to avoid floating sediment that forms from the blended mint.
- Mix the pitcher. Then mix it in a pitcher with the lemon juice and more cold water.
- Garnish with fresh mint! This is also important. Garnishing with another sprig of mint is important for getting the right mint aroma to each sip.
Solutions and Suspensions
Some lemonade is a mixture of lemon juice, water, and sugar.
You know there’s sugar in lemonade, because the drink tastes sweet. But you can’t see the sugar. Why? Because the sugar is completely dissolved in the liquid.
Mixed together, lemon juice, water, and sugar form a solution. A solution is a mixture in which the different kinds of matter are spread out evenly. In lemonade, water is called the solvent. Sugar and lemon juice are solutes. A solute is matter that dissolves in a solvent. The solvent is often a liquid, such as water. If a solution consists of different amounts of two liquids, the solvent is the liquid that there’s more of.
▲ You can make lemonade by mixing water, lemon juice, and sugar.
The Lemony Ticket
Lemonade has properties similar to other solutions.
Once it is completely mixed, a solution is the same throughout. In the example of lemonade, the ratio of sugar to water to lemon juice is the same everywhere in the glass or pitcher.
The mixture does not separate if it is left standing or poured through a strainer.
At a solution’s saturation point, no more of the solute will dissolve in the solvent. If you add more sugar, it won’t dissolve—it will just sink to the bottom of the glass.
Mmmm… refreshing and a-peeling.
◀ Ocean water is a solution of salt and water. There are about 2.2 pounds of salt in every cubic foot of ocean water. How much water is in a cubic foot? It’s all the water that would fit in a box one foot high, one foot wide, and one foot deep. If all the salt in the ocean were spread over the land, it would form a layer about as tall as a 40-story building.
▲ Scientists have found ways to use evaporation and other methods to create freshwater from ocean water. The process is called desalination. Desalination is important in areas of the world where freshwater is scarce.
▲ Sugar and salt form solutions with water easily, but oil, pepper, sand, and wood do not. That’s because of molecules, and the forces that hold them together. A molecule is the very smallest amount of something. For a solution to form, there must be an attraction between the molecules of the solute and the solvent. Here, we’re talking about the molecules of water and oil—or sand or pepper or wood. If that attraction is not strong enough, the solvent does not spread out into the water. That’s why no solution forms.
◀ Water can form a solution with air, and that produces humidity. Like other solutions, air can become saturated with water. When that happens, we say that the relative humidity is 100 percent. As the temperature cools down, the air can hold less water, and that leads to rain.
▲ Mud puddles and fog are mixtures, but neither one is a solution. Mud puddles and fog are both called suspensions, which are mixtures of bits of matter that are big enough to be seen. A mud puddle is a suspension of soil and water. Fog is a suspension of water droplets in air. The matter in most suspensions can be separated with a filter. But not fog, because it is a kind of suspension called a colloid. Colloids have very tiny particles of matter, so they can’t be filtered easily.
How to draw a lemonade pitcher
Using the Direct Selection Tool, select the two inner points and pull the Corner Widgets out to round the pitcher.
Draw a rectangle over the bottom area. to create a flat spot. Select all the shapes and use the Pathfinder Minus front mode to delete the bottom portion.
Select the Curvature Tool and click on the top line and pull one point down, add another point and pull it up.
Create an oval with a heavy stroke. Rotate the shape and position it for the handle.
Choose Path>Outline Stroke to convert it to a shape.
Select the main part of the pitcher, choose path>Offset Path and set the offset to a negative number to create a a shape inside.
Fill the handle and larger pitcher shape with a light gray, keeping the inside offset path yellow.
Select both gray shapes and combine them using the Pathfinder Unite mode.
Draw a rectangle over the top portion of the inner area. Select all the inner shape and the rectangle and use the Pathfinder Minus front mode to delete the top portion.
For the lemon create a circle with a heavy stroke. Make the stroke darker than the fill.
To create segments inside the lemon, select the Polar Grid tool nested with the line tool in the Tool Bar. Click with the Polar Grid Tool to bring up the options. Set 0 concentric dividers and 8 radial dividers.
Fill the segments with the same yellow as the lemon, add a heavy white stroke to create divisions.
Add the segments to the lemon and group the shapes together.
To create half a lemon, draw a rectangle and click on the Draw Inside Mode at the bottom of the Tool Bar.
Copy and paste the lemon into the rectangle, position it so the half shows then click on the Draw Normal Mode at the bottom of the Tool Bar.
Add lemons into the lemonade.
Draw a rectangle over half of the shape, set the Blending Mode in the Opacity Panel to be Multiply.
Select the gray rectangle and the gray portion of the pitcher and select the Shape Builder Tool (SHIFT + M). Hold OPTION/ALT to set the cursor to subtract and click on the extra outside the main shapes to delete.
Use the Curvature tool to add a point and pull the shape to the side to curve the shadow
Select the shadow and choose Path>Offset Path. Offset the path a negative number to create a smaller shape.
Delete the original shadow shape, keeping the smaller shadow shape.
This is what the inset shadow looks like giving the glass an appearance of thickness.
Add a color circle behind the lemonade.
Copy the gray part of the pitcher, Paste it Behind the original pitcher and change the color to a darker gray and set the Blending Mode in the Opacity panel to Multiply.
Add a slip shadow by adding an effect from Effect> Distort & Transform> Transform. Set the horizontal and vertical offset to a small number and set the copies to be enough to create a slip shadow beyond the edge of the circle.
Cut the shadow. Select the background circle and click on the Draw Inside Mode at the bottom of the Tool Bar.
