Refreshing sparkling lemonade with the fresh taste of mint and real lemons, this skinny sparkling lemonade is perfect for a hot summer day! And, since it has only 6 calories per serving, you can sip to your heart’s content. Add a shot of vodka or limoncello for a skinny-licious summer cocktail. It’s super easy to make too.
I’ve been kind of enthralled with the idea of making homemade soda for years, like when Sodastream first came out, before people really knew it was a thing, my kids and I were all over it. Until the carbon cartridges ran out and it was time to refill them, but they were so heavy and shipping them back to sodastream seemed a little cost prohibitive. I wasn’t sure if there was a place in town that would refill the carbon cartridges, so our sodastream got relegated to the closet for “someday” and we quit making our own sodas at home. Except not entirely. A few times every summer, we HAD to make Italian cream sodas … my daughter really loves Italian cream sodas and I have to say, they are really fun to make, but they do use sugar as a sweetener and I’m not so keen on drinking sugar. So I make Italian cream sodas for others but do not partake for myself.
Recently I’ve been drinking lots of sparkling water (because I love bubbles), and I stumbled across some flavored liquid stevia in my pantry that NuStevia had sent me ages ago and I asked myself: why am I not using that liquid stevia to make my own homemade skinny sodas? So I did and it was so good! I tried it first with the orange flavored stevia … and added a little basil and that was really yummy. I thought about blogging that, but needed some oranges because of course you have to have fresh oranges to photograph an orange basil soda. When I went to the store to buy an orange or two, I saw a bag of lovely lemons and decided to do a sparkling lemonade. Because everyone loves lemonade in the summer, right? How many times do you hear people talking about drinking orangeade? Yeah, like never. People drink orange juice, not orangeade.
I added fresh mint from my mint garden. Fresh mint really does add a nice scent and another dimension of flavor to the lemonade.
FYI if you’re going to plant mint: mint is quite invasive and has drowned out everything else in the tiny garden except the echinacea, which goes ahead and grows just fine despite the mint. So it’s a mint/echinacea garden, but that’s just fine with me. I love having fresh mint available anytime I want it and the echinacea makes pretty pink flowers in late summer. I tried adding another plant that my friend gave me and it was doing fine until the deer came and ate it. Sigh. Dang deer!
But I digress. My point was: If you’re going to plant mint, keep it in a pot or in a small contained space so it doesn’t take over your garden. That’s my tiny bit of gardening advice.
For this beverage, I used the lemon nustevia. And, btw, NuNaturals didn’t pay me to say that and I make no commission if you go buy something from them, but they did send me several different flavors of stevia, which was pretty awesome. That liquid stevia is making my summer beverages so much more fun.
Do you have to use stevia? No, you can use whatever liquid sweetener you’re partial to, or you can make a simple syrup to sweeten your lemonade.
How to make a simple syrup? Put 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar in a small saucepan. Stir, bring to a boil, stirring again just to make sure all the sugar dissolved in the water, then remove from heat and let cool. (You can also add berries and/or herbs to flavor your syrup as you please, then strain them out once the syrup is cooled.)
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Sparkling Mint Lemonade (Low Calorie)
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 1 serving 1x
Ingredients
- 1/2 of a fresh lemon
- Several fresh mint leaves
- Ice cubes
- 1 12-oz. can sparkling water or club soda
- 1/2 – 1 dropper of liquid lemon flavored stevia (or other liquid low calorie sweetener of choice)
Instructions
- Cut off the bottom of the lemon and squeeze the juice from it into a 16-oz. glass. Cut a couple more slices of lemon and squeeze them into the glass as well.
- Take some of the mint leaves and rub them in your hands to release the oils, then and add them to the glass as well. Take a spoon and muddle the mint leaves and lemon around a bit. Add some ice to the glass so the glass is about half full of ice and lemons.
- Pour some of the sparkling water into the glass (so it’s about half full), then add the stevia, then fill the rest of the glass with the sparkling water. Gently stir and take a taste, adding more sweetener if needed. Garnish with a sprig of mint and/or a lemon slice and enjoy!
Notes
RECIPE SOURCE: http://www.sumptuousspoonfuls.com/
© Copyright 2019, Sumptuous Spoonfuls. All images & content are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to publish any of my images, please ask first. If you want to republish this recipe as your own, please re-write the recipe in your own words or link back to this post for the recipe.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 lemonade
- Calories: 6
- Fat: 0
Looking for other homemade soda recipes?
My daughter and I love making Italian cream sodas every summer. You can leave out the cream to make an Italian soda that is dairy free. Can you tell my daughter really loves rose-flavored sodas? (If you’re not partial to drinking roses, you can leave out the roses in any of the “rose” flavored ones.)
- Honey Mango Rose Italian Cream Sodas
- Rosemary Plum Italian Cream Sodas
- Maple Cherry Italian Cream Sodas
- Cherry Vanilla Rose Italian Cream Sodas
- Mulberry Maple Rose Italian Cream Sodas
- Strawberry Rose Italian Cream Sodas
2 comments
Perfect for summer. Looks refreshing.
So regering ❤