I came across this recipe in Recipezaar when I was searching for mango recipes for this month’s Weekend Breakfast Blogging – May Mango Madness hosted by Arundati, originally started by Nandita.  Inspite of the good reviews, I was not sure if we would like the combination of these two fruits, so I scaled down the measurements.  But to my surprise it tasted very good. 

Ingredients:
Raspberries, fresh or frozen – 1/2 cup
Maongo chunks, fresh or frozen – 1/2 cup
Plain Yogurt/Vanilla Yogurt – 1/2 cup
Milk – 2 cups
Honey/Sugar – as per your taste
Vanilla essence – 1 teaspoon (if you are using plain yogurt)

Procedure:
1.  In a blender add the fruits, yogurt, honey and 1 cup of milk and blend it smooth.  If your using fresh fruits you can also add few ice cubes during this stage.  I used frozen fruits, so I thawed them at room temperature just for 5 minutes and blended it.

2.  Now add the remaining milk or as much as required to get the desired consistency.

This also goes to my dear friend Dee’s AFAM – Raspberry event.

My friend Dee made the announcement for the event she is hosting for AFAM (A Fruit A Month), started by Maheshwari on 1st of May and I can’t believe it’s the 24th already.  She has chosen Raspberries as this month’s fruit.  I did spend a lot of time searching the net for interesting recipes and bookmarked a lot of them, but somehow it got delayed.  Finally here I am, with a recipe for a simple lemonade with raspberries.  Hope I will able to send another one too.

Before going to the recipe, a small trivia I found about Raspberry.  According to legend, raspberries were originally white. The nymph Ida pricked her finger while picking berries for the crying infant Jupiter, and raspberries have since been tinged red with her blood. (The botanical name of the raspberry is Rubus idaeus. Rubus means “red”, and idaeus means “belonging to Ida”).

Ingredients:
Frozen or Fresh Raspberries – 2 cups
Juice of 1 big Lemon
Water – 5 cups
Sugar – ½ cup

Procedure:
1.  If using frozen raspberries, thaw them as per the instructions in the package.
2.  Blend it using approximately 2 cups of water.
3.  Strain the raspberry juice using a fine sieve repeatedly to get rid of the seeds. (that’s what it’s called right?)
4.  In order to dissolve the sugar, I added the sugar, lemon juice and a little bit of the raspberry juice in a blender and blended it thoroughly.  To this add the remaining 3 cups of water, raspberry puree and mix it well.  That’s it, Raspberry Lemonade is ready now.  Serve it in a glass with ice cubes and garnish it with mint leaves.

Alternatively you can also pour the lemonade in ice pop moulds and freeze it, for a cool popsicle.  My son loved this version.

And this will be a lovely treat for summer.  Enjoy!

Sangeeth has passed me the “You Make My Day Award”.  Thank you very much Sangeeth.  You also make my day with your lovely comments in my blog.