Juneteenth is an American celebration of the end of slavery. Originating in Texas, one of the major traditions is eating red foods. And “red foods” extends to beverages — with strawberry soda and pink lemonade being traditional favorites.
Healthy and almost-traditional options include homemade soda made with Strawberry-Honey Soda Syrup, and Strawberry Lemonade Water Kefir — and this adaptation (below) of my “Healthy Lemonade,” sweetened with fruit juice instead of processed sugar.
Healthy Pink Lemonade
Healthy Pink Lemonade
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup lemon juice
- 48 oz white grape juice
- 1-3 tsp freeze-dried dragon fruit powder (1 tsp. to 1 Tbsp.)
Instructions
- Mix the dragon fruit powder into either the lemon juice or a small amount of the grape juice and stir well until dissolved. You might find that it needs a little help to not lump up.
- Add the remaining ingredients, stir well, and chill.
Dragon Fruit Powder for Baking & Drink (4oz) – Kate Naturals
I found that my fruit powder wanted to make some lumpy places; most of it dissolved, but it didn’t all dissolve smoothly. I was too lazy to get out a blender or anything, so I poured mine back and forth through a small sieve, but you might want to use something like an immersion blender to get all the lumps out.
The lemonade in most of the photos uses a full tablespoon of fruit powder and, as you can see, it’s a really vibrant hot pink — essentially fuchsia. If you want yours to be more of a traditional pink color — less bold — use less powder. (My daughter gave this the side-eye when I first offered it to her, and said it looked fake! The dragon fruit powder is just that bright.) This lemonade (below) has about half a tablespoon:
Well, I’m definitely adding this to my must-try list. The boys love lemonade, but I hate how much sugar is in it. It never occurred to me to add a sweet fruit juice in its place! And who doesn’t want fun-colored lemonade? Going to add Dragon Fruit Powder to my Amazon cart now. 😀
Thanks for the dragon fruit powder measurements. However, using grape juice rather than plain sugar really isn’t ‘more healthy’. Sugar (refined sucrose), as ‘bad’ as it is, IS a natural product. In addition, your body uses energy and time to break sucrose molecules into glucose and fructose. Whereas the natural ‘sugars’ in grape juice (a LOT of sugar, I might add) are … glucose and fructose. So when consumed, they’re absorbed directly and will actually spike your blood sugar faster than the sucrose (you know, because of the whole body-has-to-break-it-down part is missing). Just saying. Because this is technically just grape juice spiked with lemon – NOT lemonade.