Kids Wednesday: Making Homemade Lemonade into a science experiment

My son decided that he wanted to make lemonade because he loves lemonade so we went to find lemons.  They weren't pretty and they were a little overpriced at $3.50 for the bag but we decided to get them anyway because we were currently on a mission to make this lemonade and knew that no one would have them cheaper then Aldi.

My mother washed the lemons.  My son rolled them to get the juice loose.

My husband was in charge of juicing the lemons with the wonderful handheld juicer that my in laws purchased for me from Christmas.

We were left with a pile of lemons that were very sad looking

Then my mom decided that she wanted to zest the lemons.  She did a few that were whole and went back and did some of the already juiced ones.

After getting a cup of lemon juice and only a few lemons left in the bag, we decided it was time to stop.

We put away everything in order to have dinner which is what I was doing during this process that was happening all over the dinning room table.  We started round two the next day.  I got out the pitcher, measuring cup and the lemon juice.  I added 8 cups of water which ended up filling up most of the pitcher which was perfect.

The lemon juice had a few seeds and lots of pulp so I decided to use a fine mesh strainer.

After looking at the strainer, I was glad that I used it!  It took out a lot of the pulp and the seeds so that I didn't have to stick my hand into the juice.

While that was going, we made a simple syrup (also known as dissolving sugar in water).  We put one cup of water on the stove.  My son measured (with a little help) one cup of sugar and poured it in the pot.  Some got out as always does when a 6 year old is pouring and my mom cleaned it off and put it into the pot...which then had a very suspicious basil or oregano floating in so you know that it wasn't cleaned off great from the last use. I picked out the unwanted spice and suggested that the rest go into the trash can.

It dissolved pretty quickly to show my son that it was water soluble and he was quickly done stirring it.  I was left alone in the kitchen to stir the sugar water and watch for it to boil which happened pretty quickly after I turned up the temperature a little.  I let it cool and then added it to the lemon and water mixture to make lemonade.  My family had their glasses of lemonade for dinner that next night.  We got to make something my son loves and talk a little bit about science so it was a victory!

When I went searching for the right quantities, I found that everyone makes this in huge batches but we were looking to make it with our one cup of lemon juice which worked out perfectly to a pitcher so we changed the quantities down and went with this recipe because who can go wrong with the Pioneer Woman!!

Homemade Lemonade

Ingredients

• 1 cups Sugar
• 1 cup Water
• 10-12 whole Lemons, Juiced for 1 cup of juice
• 8 cups water (additional)

Preparation Instructions

Juice the lemons and chill the lemon juice if you have the time.

Heat 1 cups sugar with 1 cups of water in a medium saucepan until it's dissolved. Set this in the fridge to cool.

Measure 8 cups of water into pitcher.  Strain the lemon juice into pitcher. Pour in cooled syrup/sugar water.  Stir until combined.  Add more syrup if it needs sweetness, or more water if it needs dilution.  Make sure if you are going to serve over ice that you leave it a little stronger.

Serve immediately!