Homemade lemonade

Our lemon trees had quite a few lemons on them so I decided the new blossoms (& resulting fruit) may get a boost if I snip off all the fruit still on the trees.

I arranged them all prettily in a bowl in my kitchen with a few clusters of leaves too. Decor made simple! Later I discovered there was no juice at home for the kids to drink, so I thought of those lemons decorating my kitchen table… & decided “Have lemons? Make lemonade!”

(I didn’t pick this many lemons! I took this photo on our recent holiday to Franschhoek in the Western Cape at a gorgeous guest farm called Babylonstoren)

Here’s the recipe:

Homemade Lemonade

1 cup sugar (either caster sugar or granulated)

1 cup water

1 cup of lemon juice                                                                                                

Hint :  freshly squeezed lemon juice is much nicer than the one from a bottle! You’ll need approximately 4 lemons for 1 cup.

Method:

Place the sugar & water in a small saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves. (It dissolves quicker than you think).

Add the lemon juice.

Place all in a jug and add 4 cups of cold water. Chill in the fridge.

Delicious served with ice, lemon slices & a few sprigs of mint.

 

This recipe really take a few minutes to make and my kids love it!! They keep asking for more!

So …….. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!!

North Pole Snow

Another day ticked off our advent calendar… (Actually in our case it’s another chocolate for Shannon from her little “Advent house” and another tiny Lego goodie to build for Reece from his Star Wars Lego Advent calendar) :0)

I promised the recipe for the North Pole Snow (sherbet) I made to go along with the Reindeer lollipops yesterday.

North Pole Snow (sherbet Christmas treats)

• 1 cup of icing sugar
• around 1/4 teaspoon citric acid * (or to taste – a little at a time. I added the citric acid to taste when I made mine as I made a lot for the market)

Mix together well.

*Citric acid is available at supermarkets/ baking supply shops.

*Here’s the printable label I made:

click on label for downloadable A4 printable sheet

• Print out the label sheet onto A4 cardstock, cut out the labels.
• Glue each label onto the front of a small zip-lock bag with a glue gun.
• Fill the bag with the North Pole Snow and delight tiny people with a bag of snow and a reindeer lollipop. The kids love dipping the lollipops in the sherbet!

I also made a few Christmas trees with this design from the Silhouette Online store. They are really cute and easy to make – especially once my Silhouette had cut them out for me.

Each tree had a bag of the North Pole Snow inside and instead of gluing the label to the bag, I attached it as a tag to the top of the tree at the closure.

PS: I can’t guarantee your entire kitchen won’t be covered in fine sticky ‘snow’ – especially if there are little people involved in making these!

TIP : To assist in getting the snow into the bags, I used a small funnel – much easier (and less messy) than using a spoon.

My little entrepreneur selling at the Christmas market at school :

 

*I cannot recall where I got the little snowman image from. I coloured it myself, but the design is not my own. If it is yours , please do let me know so that I can provide credit to you. Or, if you would rather I do not use it here in my free label printable, please advise.

Marshmallow Frosting

I’ve been following The Creative Chick Parade over at The Girl Creative and am so enjoying all the various crafts being shared.

How it works is, you merely link up a craft you’ve created and posted about on your blog. It can be an old post or a new one, it doesn’t matter. You just have to link up to the theme for the day.

Well, today’s theme is recipes and I recently stumbled across a really yummy frosting for cakes. It works especially well on cupcakes. If you pipe it on, it stands up beautifully – much like soft serve ice-cream! And the taste… well it tastes just like gooey soft marshmallow fluff! {In South Africa we get Cadbury’s “Sweetie Pies” chocolates with this marshmallow goo inside – and this frosting tastes just like it!}.

 

4 large egg whites

1 Cup ordinary sugar (white or brown)

1 pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

Place all ingredients except the vanilla essence into a bowl which you can place over a pot of simmering water.

{You could use a double boiler here instead}

Whisk the egg white mixture constantly over simmering water until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is hot to the touch. {It takes around 5 minutes}.

Pour the mixture into a bigger bowl and beat with an electric mixer for 3 minutes. {Add the vanilla while beating}. After 3 minutes, the mixture will be lovely and fluffy.

{I used my Kenwood food mixer}

I love using disposable piping bags – {or you could even use a plastic bag} without a nozzle, I simply piped straight out the end of the piping bag directly onto the cupcakes.

Don’t you love how they look – and so yummy!!!

Hope you try this recipe. It sounds like a bit of work, but really it takes very little time and effort and they are so easy to pipe as the icing is very soft and much easier to squirt out than buttercream.