(We give a waiver to Mike’s Hard Lemonade, a line of carbonated, flavored malt liquor drinks in a dozen or so flavors. It’s not lemonade per se, but we’re fans.)

Bottled lemonade drinks are not only pasteurized, which kills the fresh flavor; but typically use reconstituted lemon juice, which, of course, totally kills off the bright lemon flavor of fresh-squeezed juice.

Lemonade “made from concentrate” and sold in cartons like orange juice is the far better choice, as are cans of frozen lemonade concentrate.

But the best choice of all is to squeeze fresh lemons. It takes just five minutes to make a single glass, and you can adjust the sweetening to your own taste.

While plain fresh-squeezed lemonade is wonderful in of itself, it’s even more wonderful when you add a bit of glamour.
 
 
FOR A LEMONADE PARTY BAR

We leave our pitchers of lemonade unsweetened to accommodate every preference.

For a party, set up a bar where guests can add their own sweeteners—agave, honey, noncaloric sweetener, superfine sugar or simple syrup.

You can buy or easily make the latter two, which, unlike table sugar, dissolve easily in cold drinks.

 
 
LEMONADE RECIPE TIPS & TRICKS

1. Make Fancy Ice

 
2. Other “Formats”

 
3. Flavored Lemonade

You can flavor the lemonade or set out a “flavor bar” so guests can add their own:

 
4. Sweeteners

 
5. Garnishes

 
6. One Glass Or One Pitcher

 
 
RECIPES: FLAVORED & SPECIALTY LEMONADE

 
ADULT LEMONADE RECIPES

[1] Add your favorite flavor counterpoints, from berries to cucumber. Muddle as desired (photo courtesy True Food Kitchen | Facebook).

[2] Some like it hot: They can add some jalapeño slices or other hot and spicy ingredients (photo courtesy Melissa’s).

[3] Add a tart-and-sweet rim: lemon or lime zest, plain or mixed with sugar (photo courtesy Saint Marc Pub-Café).

[4] Garnish with your favorite herbs. We like the counterpoint of basil, mint or rosemary (photo courtesy Fig & Olive).

[5] Toss berries and herbs into the pitcher (photo courtesy Cocina De Color Lila).

[6] Summer’s fresh blackberries or huckleberries are another great lemonade pairing (photo courtesy Izakaya Den | Denver).

RECIPE: WATERMELON LEMONADE COCKTAIL

This recipe from Haru uses more citron vodka than lemon juice, but the combination of ingredients is a winner.

Ingredients Per Drink

 
For The Thyme Simple Syrup

1. MAKE the thyme simple syrup. Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the thyme sprigs. Let steep for 10 minutes; then cool to room temperature before using.

2. MUDDLE the watermelon cubes in a mixing glass. Add the remaining ingredients ice and shake vigorously for 8-10 seconds.

e. POUR into an ice-filled glass. Garnish and serve.
  

Got blueberries? There at an excellent price right now. When October brings half-pints of blueberries for $5 and more, you’ll be sorry you didn’t enjoy more of these during peak blueberry season.

So enjoy all the blueberry and mixed fruit salads, cocktails, and pies. Here are some of our recipes to include blueberries in every meal.

> July is National Blueberry Month.

> The year’s 11 blueberry holidays.

> The year’s 35+ berry holidays.

> 7 substitutes for fresh blueberries.

> The history of blueberries is below.
 
 
MORE BLUEBERRY RECIPES

BEVERAGES

 
BREAKFAST

 
MAINS, SAUCES & SIDES

 
DESSERTS

 
 
THE HISTORY OF BLUEBERRIES

Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) are one of the few fruit species native* to North America and unknown in Europe: perennial flowering plants with indigo-colored berries. Also included in the Vaccinium genus are cranberries, bilberries, and grouseberries.

Vaccinum is a member of the Ericaceae family, which also includes the huckleberry (the most common in the U.S. is the black huckleberry, Gaylussacia baccata) and popular non-edibles including azalea, rhododendron, and various common heaths and heathers.

Blueberries are called by different names, including bilberry, cowberry, farkleberry, and sparkleberry.

Wild blueberries were gathered by Native Americans to eat as fresh fruit during the season and used dried fruit thereafter.

[1] Blueberry breakfast salad: combine any fruits atop greens (photo © Blueberry Council).

[2] Blueberry-yogurt-granola parfait (photo © Fruits From Chile).

[3] Blueberry vinaigrette for salads and broiled proteins (photo © Wild Blueberries).

[4] Blueberries into a grilled chicken or salmon salad (photo © CFAA).

[5] Salmon with blueberry sauce (photo © Munchery).

Dried blueberries also sustained the Pilgrims. When they arrived at Cape Cod in November 1620, blown off course from their Virginia† destination, it was far too late to plant crops.

The settlers nearly starved to death until the Wampanoag people shared food and taught them to grow native plants such as corn and squash. The settlers of Plymouth learned which foods to gather and dry (blueberries, cranberries) to sustain them through the winter.

The blueberries used by the Indians were the wild or low bush variety, the state fruit of Maine, where they are a major crop.

Most blueberries that are cultivated today are the high bush variety, domesticated in the early 20th century. The plants have been improved over the years to increase the berry’s size and color and the bush’s yield. Cultivation of the high-bush blueberry has been so successful that America now grows over 90% of the blueberries in the world.

However, while Maine’s low-bush blueberries are significantly smaller, they are more flavorful.

Some 20 years ago, blueberries were anointed a “superfood” after studies of the benefits of antioxidants became part of healthy eating in the U.S. Blueberries are one of foods highest in antioxidants.

Blueberries are easily preserved by freezing, canning, and drying. They can also be juiced or made into jam or preserves. The surge in the popularity of blueberries has caused home gardeners to plant these shrubs in nearly every growing area of America.
 
 
________________

*Blueberries and cranberries, along with other indigenous fruits such as mayhaws and papwpaws, were unknown in the Old World. North America has its own native species such as cherries, grapes, plums, persimmons, raspberries, and other well-known species from the Old World. Here’s the list of fruits native to North America.

Bilberries are smaller, wild European cousins of cultivated North American blueberries, distinguished by their intensely dark blue/purple flesh (vs. green/white inside blueberries), higher antioxidant levels (anthocyanins), and a tarter, more complex flavor, making them stain more. They are often preferred cooked in jams. Blueberries are larger, sweeter, milder, and have green flesh and a waxy, whitish outer bloom. Bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus), which are native to Europe, are members of the same genus as North American blueberries. There are two main species of blueberry native to America: the Highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum, and the Lowbush blueberry, Vaccinium angustifolium.
 

†At the time, Virginia included the region as far north as the Hudson River in the modern State of New York. The Hudson River was their originally intended destination.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] The original ice box cake was made by Nabisco. Wafers and whipped cream were assembled and then frozen, to make cutting easy. After the taller cake became popular, the original version was named Refrigerator Roll (photo courtesy Nabisco).

[2] The cake evolved into the classic Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Ice Box Cake, a tall affair that was impressive to look at, but not so neat to cut (here’s the recipe from The Very Kitchen).

[3] In recent decades, cooks got creative, substituting chocolate whipped cream, strawberry whipped cream and other fruit flavors, and adding layers of fruit on top of the wafers (photo courtesy The King’s Cupboard).

[4] In the last decade or two, fruit crept into the recipe, exemplified by this Strawberry Ice Box Cake from Cabot Co-op (recipe).

[5] Home cooks got even more creative with the ingredients, as in this Lemon Blueberry Ice Box Cake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Instead, wafer cookies—the thin, flat kind—are layered with whipped cream and refrigerated for 4 hours or more. Moisture from the whipped cream softens the cookies, turning them into with individual refrigerator cakes.

Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Cookies date to the 1930s: very thin, crispy chocolate cookies that were used for icebox cakes and chocolate crumb crusts.

The Ice Box Cake was created by Nabisco home economists and printed on the wrapper—as so many iconic American recipes were—to sell more product!

We’re not talking general recipes: Oatmeal cookies existed long before Quaker Oats printed a recipe on its label. We’re talking inventions:

 
There are hundreds of examples, and a number of cookbooks that feature these recipes from boxes, bottles, cans and jars. They were typically developed by home economists at the manufacturing company, but others came from home cooks (German Chocolate Cake, Marshmallow Treats and Toll House Cookies are some examples).
________________

*Created by Mildred Day, a Campfire Girls counselor and Kellogg’s employee, who created the recipe to help her Campfire Girls raise money.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF NABISCO FAMOUS CHOCOLATE WAFER COOKIES

Dating to the 18th century, wafer cookies were made by home cooks and later by bake shops. By the 20th century, they were popular enough to make their way into commercial manufacture.

The first manufactured chocolate wafers—Nabisco’s Famous Chocolate Wafers—debuted in 1924. The company sold a tin of three flavors: chocolate, ginger and sugar wafers.

When Nabisco transitioned to cardboard packaging around 1930, the other flavors were dropped and the Famous Chocolate Wafer boxes were printed with the recipe for Icebox Cake. In the first iteration (photo #1), a log of chocolate wafers separated with whipped cream, that was then frozen.

From that moment, Chocolate Ice Box Cake was a hit. It could be made equally well by experienced cooks as well as housewives who rarely entered the kitchen (or if they did, were not known for their culinary gifts).

Delicious any time, it was a godsend in summer months, when, before the dawn of widespread air conditioning, no one had the desire to turn on the oven. The recipe was enlarged to a “layer cake” format (photo #2).

Separately, the wafers were crushed and used as crusts for pies and cheesecakes, and as dessert garnishes.

While ice box cake is an American invention, is a descendant of the charlottes and trifles that date to 17th-century Europe.

Here’s the longer history of ice box cakes, charlottes and trifles.
 
MODERN ICE BOX CAKE IDEAS

With today’s ice box cakes, anything goes, with:

 
You can turn the garnishes into food fun: a “decorate your own” approach. Provide bowls of:

These days, with all the competition on the supermarket shelf, it can be hard to find Nestle’s Famous Chocolate Wafers. Thank goodness for online shopping.

But how about making your own? They’ll taste even better.

Here’s a recipe from King Arthur Flour. Prep time is 30-50 minutes, bake time is 20-22 minutes.

Whether you bake them or buy them, you can make individual refrigerator cakes by making single stack of wafers and cream instead of a larger cake. You need to refrigerate them at least 4 hours before serving, or overnight.

This recipe makes 3½ dozen, 2½-inch cookies.
 
 
RECIPE: HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE WAFERS FOR ICE BOX CAKE

Ingredients For 8 Individual Stack Cakes Or 1 Large Cake

For The Wafers

 
For The Filling

________________
†Black cocoa is a super-dark Dutch-process cocoa from King Arthur Flour. It is used sparingly for an intense, dark color and unsweetened-chocolate highlights. This rich cocoa will make the darkest chocolate cake or cookies, but you can use the cocoa you have.

1. GREASE lightly (or line with parchment) two baking sheets, or more if you have them; you’ll make 3 to 4 baking sheets’ worth of cookies.

2. BEAT together in a medium-sized bowl the sugar, butter, salt, baking powder and espresso powder. Beat in the egg and vanilla, then the flour and cocoa. Cover the dough and chill for 30 minutes. While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F.

3. ROLL the dough about 1/8″ thick. Use cocoa instead of flour to dust your rolling board and the dough. Cut into 2 ½”-round cookies. A biscuit cutter is handy for this.

4. BAKE the cookies for 10 minutes. Watch them closely at the end of the baking time, and if you start to smell chocolate before 10 minutes has gone by, take them out. When they’re done, remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool completely.

5. MAKE the filling: Whisk together the heavy cream and other ingredients. When blended, whip until the cream holds a soft peak.

6. ASSEMBLE: Place one cookie on a small plate. Put about a tablespoon of whipped cream on top; our teaspoon cookie scoop, heaped up, works well here.
Top with a second cookie, using it to compress the whipped cream to about a ¼”-thick layer. Repeat with 4 more cookies, finishing with a layer of whipped cream. Refrigerate from 4 to 24 hours before serving.

Flavored Whipped Cream Variations

To flavor 1 cup of cream, add one of the following combinations 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar + 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. To play around with other flavors, use these guidelines:

 
These are just some of the many variations that will delight you, your friends and family.

Put on your toque and your apron and get out your artist’s palette.

[7] An individual-portion ice box cake. Just stack the wafers and whipped cream vertically (photo courtesy King Arthur Flour).

[8] Another mini ice box cake—with a cherry on top! Here’s the recipe from If You Give A Blonde A Kitchen.