Blueberry Lemonade

For today’s blog post, we are paying homage to a gardener’s best friend: bees! To celebrate them, I have created a delightful Blueberry Lemonade that I am serving up in the brand new Ball® Honeybee Keepsake Mason Jar. This is my second year as a Ball® ambassador and I am so excited to be collaborating with them today. In this post, you will find two recipes: one for Blueberry Freezer Jam which can be used as a great shortcut for making the other recipe: Blueberry Lemonade. Because the jam has sugar that’s already dissolved, you can make a batch of lemonade easily and quickly, plus you get the gorgeous pop of color and flavor from blueberries.

The goal of these new jars is to highlight the vital importance of pollinators in growing the foods we love to preserve. Embossed with a bee and honeycomb design, the glass jars with lids are perfect for crafting, serving, decorating, and, of course, canning all the beautiful fruits and vegetables grown with help from nature’s most powerful pollinator. The BPA-free pint jars with bee decor are also great as drinkware (like for the lemonade in this post!) or as glass storage jars. This set of 4 Regular Mouth Ball® Jars comes with bands and SureTight lids that seal up to 18 months when used according to food preservation instructions. If you’d like to get your hands on some of your very own, tap the link here.

Here is a little cartoon drawing that I remembered seeing on Instagram. I thought it was so cute, and it’s such a lovely nod to these powerful pollinators. I make it a point to have plenty of native wild flowers in my garden to directly support bees and to keep them happy. This is not only beneficial to them and other pollinators, but it also helps to create a beautiful and colorful backyard in addition to an overall increase in crop yield because they are pollinating my fruits and veggies!

Now on to the recipe! For this Blueberry Lemonade you will need to make your base with an easy Blueberry Freezer Jam recipe. This recipe comes from the Ball® archives and it couldn’t be simpler. All you need is blueberries, bottled lemon juice, unsweetened white grape or apple juice, Ball® RealFruit Low or No-Sugar Needed Pectin, and up to 3 cups of sugar. Everything is done in one small pot and then you can load up your jars and have blueberry jam for whenever you need!

Once finished, you can either store the jam in the fridge or you can freeze it so you can enjoy the taste of blueberries all year long. It’s important to note that not all jars are freezer-safe. Jars with tapered sides or straight sides are good to go while shouldered jars are not. You can learn more about using Ball® jars for freezing on their website. I decided to use Ball® Quilted Crystal Jars for the jam, as they are freezer safe. Once done, I put a few jars in the fridge to use immediately and a few jars in the freezer for later use.

The process for the jam is very straight-forward. All you need to do is crush some blueberries (you can use a potato masher). In a small pot, you will combine the grape juice or apple juice, lemon juice, and pectin and mix until dissolved. Bring this to a rolling boil and then add the blueberries. Once nice and thick, you will transfer to the jars and make sure to leave a ½ inch headspace because the jam will expand while freezing. Then secure the lids and let the jam stand in the refrigerator until set, approximately 24 hours, and keep in the fridge or transfer to the freezer.

You can use this blueberry jam for anything you’d like (with baked cheese and puff pastry, on toast or biscuits, or in cookies), but I think it is absolutely perfect for making homemade lemonade. The reason for this is because the sugar is already dissolved and ready to be combined easily with fresh lemon juice and water. Think of it as a concentrate, if you will. Simply add a few spoonfuls to a shaker with ice, water, and lots of fresh lemon juice.

Give it a good shake and pour over some ice-filled Ball® Honeybee jars with a slice or two of lemon and a small handful of fresh blueberries. And just look at that color! There is nothing quite like a refreshing glass of ice-cold lemonade on a hot summer day and with the flavor and color offered from the blueberries- the results are a true delight.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and that you try out this recipe. I wanted to offer a big thanks to Ball® for sponsoring this post and sharing their jam recipe with us all. If you’d like to see me make this live and in action, check out my latest Instagram reel. Enjoy!

-Timothy

*Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that is part of an ongoing partnership with the Fresh Preserving Division of Newell Brands. They have provided jars, equipment and monetary compensation. All thoughts and opinions expressed remain my own.