Prickly pear blended with lemonade to create an amazingly refreshing drink, perfect for a warm day in fall. Easy to make, this beverage is great for entertaining guests.
Isn’t the color to this prickly pear lemonade so pretty and vibrant? If you can’t already tell, I like my food to be colorful.
This drink is super easy to make too with just five ingredients and mint for garnish.
When I’m out grocery shopping, I always come across boxes filled with prickly pears. I figured I should take it as a sign, that it’s meant to be. So I bought a few.
I wasn’t sure at first what to do with it. But I didn’t think I could go wrong with making it into a beverage. So ta da! We now have prickly pear lemonade!
Prickly pears, if you haven’t encountered them before, are fruits from a cactus tree. They’re sweet (well, it depends on the individual fruit) and pink on the inside with a multicolored outer skin. Unfortunately, they have soo many seeds. It’s actually really annoying because it’s impossible to avoid the seeds. So how do people eat it? Sometimes they just swallow the seeds or spit them out after eating the fruit. The technique is pretty similar to eating pomegranates or guava. However, these seeds are much harder than the seeds of pomegranates or guava. Avoid biting into them. Otherwise, you’ll probably feel some pain.
But don’t worry. I have a way around this.
Make your lemonade, and add it to a blender. I used a Magic Bullet for convenience. Use a spoon to scoop the fruit with the seeds into the blender.
Blend the prickly pear with the lemonade for about 30 seconds. You’re not trying to pulverize the seeds. What you’re trying to do is separate the fruit from the seeds. So a quick whirl in the blender is perfect for that.
Pour the prickly pear lemonade through a fine mesh or a strainer to separate the seeds from the lemonade.
Pour the prickly pear lemonade into a glass with several ice cubes and serve cold.
Enjoy!
Have you entered the Wallflour Girl Etsy Store Sampler Box Giveaway yet? If not, hurry and enter before it ends!
Dental Hygiene Tip #6: To avoid stains on your teeth, avoid eating/drinking anything dark in color. That includes: coffee, tea, soy sauce, and so forth.
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I want to drink it simply for the color – how gorgeous! 🙂
Thank you, Joanne!
The color is fantastic!
Thank you!
Love Prickly Pears!
Me too =)
We have hundreds of these fruits on a giant cactus in our yard. I didn’t know what to use them for. What do they taste like?
It’s very light in flavor to be honest. Some of them are sweeter than others. I’d say they’re similar to dragonfruit, but I don’t know if you’ve had that before.I hope that helps. lol
In Arizona, where there are a lot of prickly pear cactus, they make jam with it, too.
I didn’t know that! Do you know what they do with the seeds? There’s so many of them!
I don’t know as I’ve never made it. It would make sense though that as they mashed the fruit and cooked it to make jelly or jam, they’d strain out the seeds. I used to just pick in out in the desert while hiking, but I had to keep spitting out the seeds as I walked 🙂
I had to do the same thing when I tried it! A little inconvenient lol
Looks so good, is prickly pear easy to find?
It’s easy to find where I live. I’ve seen in most of the supermarkets. And I know in some areas, there’s an abundance. So I think it just depends on where you live. You can always substitute with another berry if you can’t find it though =)
love the color! so pretty~
Thank you!
How very pretty!
Thanks!
This is gorgeous, looks delicious too.
Thank you!
Such amazingly vibrant colour! 😀
I think so too! And it’s all the prickly pear!