Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate

Doesn't it just look pretty? It tastes as good as it looks. My family is really enjoying this recipe. I think I'm going to make another batch for end of year teacher gifts. It is probably the quickest canning recipe I have ever tried!

Wash your berries or use frozen berries that you allow to thaw.

Cut off the tops and puree in a blender or food processor.

Measure out 4 cups of puree and pour into a large pan. I quadrupled the batch so I used my large pressure canning pot.

Add four cups of lemon juice. You can squeeze your own lemons or use bottled juice. Next, add 5 1/2 - 6 cups of sugar. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. You do not want the mixture to boil, you just want the sugar to dissolve. You also don't want it too hot to pour into your jars. (If you pour hot liquid into cool jars, they will break.)

I scooped my mixture up with a 2 qt picture to make the pouring into jars go quickly. You could ladle it in if you wanted to. I chose to process mine in quart jars since we have a large family. Each jar will make 4-5 quarts once we add the water later.

Here it is all ready to put in the canning pot.

Boil pints for 15 minutes and quarts for 20.

My 4 batches made 12 quarts. Mix the concentrate with 3-4 jars of water to serve - it all depends on how you like it.

Recipe adapted every so slightly from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. 

Please note: You have to be careful when altering canning recipes. You do not want to change the acidity level of the finished product to insure safety. The original recipe called for a certain amount of cups of berries, I measured how much puree that made and gave you that measurement instead. I find it much quicker to just puree the berries and measure once it is pureed. I also did mine in quarts instead of pints so I lengthened the boiling time. Neither of these changes altered the acid level.

If you haven't ever tried canning before, this would be a great recipe to start on! Enjoy!