Pink Lemonade Sangria

I know I just finished gushing about fresh, seasonal strawberries, and local Ontario fruit in general, but here’s a dirty little secret about me: I don’t like raspberries. Every year I try to convince myself otherwise, and bring home some hot pink little gems from the farmer’s market, but I think I’m finally ready to admit it. My grievances are few, but here they are:

  1. The seeds get caught in my teeth, and in my dental work. What dental work, you ask? A permanent bar that runs along the inside of my bottom front teeth. Super annoying.
  2. Furry.
  3. Sour.
  4. They grow mold so quickly!
  5. Uh, let’s just say a distant memory from university involving raspberry flavoured vodka that I don’t really want to talk about right now.

I do love raspberry jam, which I have made in the past, but straining it is kind of annoying. So for my last hurrah with raspberries I made these Raspberry Crumb Squares and these Raspberry Lemon Squares, both of which I unloaded on my parents and co-workers, neither of which I was in love with.

But then I finally found an application for raspberries that I could get on board with! Pink Lemonade Sangria! I made this for a barbecue in my parent’s backyard and my Mom, sisters-in-law (sister-in-laws?) and I slurped it right up. So easy to mix up a big pitcher of this in the morning before having people over, and it only gets better as it chills until your guests arrive.

Pink Lemonade Sangria

Source: Food & Drink, Summer 2011

Ingredients

1 lemon, thinly sliced

1 orange, thinly sliced

1 cup raspberries

1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

3/4 cup simple syrup*

1 cup water

1 bottle (750mL) dry rose wine (I can’t remember which one I used…I just asked someone at the LCBO what they would recommend)

Directions

  1. Add the lemon slices, orange slices and raspberries to a bit pitcher. Stir and muddle the raspberries a bit with spoon.
  2. Pour in the lemon juice, simple syrup, water and rose, and stir to combine. Let chill for 4 hours before serving in big glasses with ice.

*To make simple syrup, just bring equal parts sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Boil until sugar is dissolved and then remove from heat to cool before using*