Recipe - Lemonade

I love homemade lemonade. I hate the bottled fizzy drink variety (probably because my mother used to give it to me me every time I went to hospital when I was a child, which was quite a lot).

And at this time of the year we have an abundance of lemons. I love to juice them and pour into ice cube trays and freeze for using in the months when the backyard lemon tree isn't giving us it's lovely gifts. But whilst there is a glut this is one of my favourite recipes:

Lemonade

1 1/2 cups sugar
6 lemons

Place the sugar and 1 1/2 cups of water in a saucepan with the finely grated zest of two lemons. Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring constantly. Simmer for 5 minutes or until sugar has dissolved (usually it doesn't take this long).

Squeeze the juice of all 6 lemons and add to the saucepan and allow mixture to cool.

Strain into a bottle, seal and store in the fridge for up to 5 days. Use as you would a cordial, diluting with your choice of sparkling or still water. We love it with soda water.

This recipe is from one of my favourite cookbooks, Complete Perfect Recipes by David Herbert. I love everything about this book, the recipes are classics, simple and using 'normal' ingredients (fancy ingredients that you use for only one or two recipes drive me nuts!).

Enjoy!

PS Check out this beauty we picked last week, sitting next to a normal size lemon!