Tis the season for refreshing icy cold beverages! A favorite of mine is classic lemonade. Over the past couple of days i’ve been playing around with some different variations to jazz it up a bit. Over the next couple of months I am going to post several different lemonade recipes.

This first recipe is what I call “Dark Lemonade.” I use orange blossom water and coconut sugar to sweeten. The cool thing about this lemonade is that it ended up tasting close to an arnold palmer without the caffeine from the sweet tea (not to mention all of the “bad” sugar). Try it and let me know what you think!

Ingredients

6 Organic Lemons

1 tsp of Orange Blossom Water

1tsp of Essence or Pure Vanilla Extract

1/2 cup of Organic Coconut Sugar ( if you love sweet lemonade do 1/4 cup cane sugar and 1/4 cup coconut sugar)

1/2 cup hot water ( to ensure sugar is completely dissolved)

4 Cups cold (preferably filtered) water

Optional; Fresh Mint!

Directions

Freshly half and squeeze your lemons into a pitcher. Add in sugar, orange blossom water and vanilla. Then, add in the hot water and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved. Next add in your cold water (and mint if you choose). You can then refrigerate or serve immediately over ice. I wouldn’t recommend drinking this warm folks! Hope you enjoy it!