The saying goes that when you have lemons, you should make lemonade. We have a lemon tree in our backyard, so we decided we would literally make lemonade. The result was this easy lemonade recipe. Then we came up with an easy upgrade to also make Cherry Heart Lemonade.

Before we made our own lemonade recipe, my husband looked for lemonade recipes online. He found one he thought he’d try, but he ended up deciding that the recipe he tried was too sweet and too lemony for his taste. He made a couple modifications and another batch of lemonade. That was perfection. It’s still sweet. It’s still full of lemon flavor, but it’s not overpowering. My whole family loves this lemonade!

Here is my husband’s lemonade recipe.

Easy Lemonade Recipe:

Ingredients:

7 Cup water (divided, 2+5)

12 fl oz (1.5 cups) fresh lemon juice

2 Cups sugar

Note: If you also a lemon tree or a friend who does, start by picking lemons and juicing them with your favorite juicer. If you do not have easy access to fresh lemons, you could substitute bottled lemon juice, but I can’t guarantee it’ll taste the same.

Method:

In a pot on the stove, mix the sugar and 2 cups of the water.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, to make a simple syrup.  Once sugar is dissolved, let syrup cool.

In a pitcher, mix the lemon juice and the other 5 cups of water.

When syrup mixture is cool, add it to the lemon juice and water. Stir.

Refrigerate. Serve chilled.

For a fun and pretty creative twist on this lemonade recipe, you can make Cherry Heart Lemonade. This was my son’s idea that he got from the Nick Jr. show “Butterbean’s Cafe.” We decided to try it out. It’s really, truly delicious… and so pretty!

In order to made this Cherry Heart Lemonade recipe, the only special gadget you’ll need is an ice cube tray in the shape of hearts. You could use a regular ice cube tray, but then it won’t be Cherry “Heart” Lemonade. It would be simply Cherry (insert shape of ice cube) Lemonade, which is fine. It would taste the same either way, but since we made ours for Valentine’s Day, we wanted hearts.

Here’s our recipe for Cherry Heart Lemonade.

Cherry Heart Lemonade

Ingredients:

Lemonade (see recipe above)

Jar of Maraschino cherries

Apple juice (optional)

Method:

If your cherries have stems, remove the stems.

Put one cherry in each section of the ice cube tray.

Pour cherry juice over the cherries to fill the ice cubes until almost full. If you run out of cherry juice, or if desired, the optional apple juice is a delicious alternative.

Put the ice cube tray in the freezer overnight or until frozen. The cherry juice will not freeze completely solid, but it was be solid enough to remove from the tray.

Put two or three ice cubes in a glass and pour lemonade on top.

Enjoy!

Watch my family make Cherry Heart Lemonade and taste it for the very first time in the video below.

Do you think you’ll try making Cherry Heart Lemonade, or would you prefer to stick with the classic lemonade recipe?