Raspberry Iced Tea

Hello all. Let me start with a dilemma I've had for the last couple of years - I don't drink soda and I'm always looking for more drinks that are, in comparison, healthy and preferably sweet and not full of high fructose corn syrup. After my Real Strawberry Lemonade post, I've been looking for another beverage post and finally found it the other day when I was at Whole Foods. They had raspberries on sale so I bought two little boxes (12 oz.) of beautiful pink berries. Unfortunately raspberries aren't my favorite fruit so I had no idea what to make with them but I had ideas for tarts, muffins, and even cocktails. I was totally ready to knock something out when I read on some random webpage "...Served with raspberry iced tea." It could have been that I was parched at the time but I was instantly craving raspberry iced tea, so I made it.

What You'll Need:

12 oz. of raspberries

8 1/4 C of water

2/3 and C of sugar

5 Black tea bags 

This is possibly the easiest thing I have "cooked" on here. I split the process in half because I had to go to work. Before work I got the raspberries ready. This is really easy. Start by putting all of your raspberries in a medium sized pot with a 1/4 cup of water over medium heat. After about eight minutes the raspberries will start to break down and mush up. Now, I'm not going to lie but the smell of cooking/cooked raspberries is not my favorite and I'm glad that part only lasts so long. I also added 2 teaspoons of sugar because when I tasted the raspberries they were a little too sour and I wasn't sure how that would affect the tea. The tea was sweet enough in the end so you don't have to add the extra sugar at this point if you don't want.

When the raspberries are done then you need to strain the pulp. I was happy to see that A LOT of juice was strained (compared to the purees I do which is a gamble). Use a spoon or spatula to press the berries to make sure you get as much juice as possible.

Like I said, I had to split the work between work shifts so I poured the juice into a cup and placed it safely in the refrigerator to be used later.

Pure raspberry juice.

When I came home I made the actual tea part. Usually I'm a green tea drinker and only get black tea at Peet's Coffee or The Cheesecake Factory so I had to go out and buy some. In a medium sized pot or tea kettle, boil 4 cups of water. When the water is boiling pour in the sugar and simmer for for 5 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved.

This the water with the sugar added.

Turn off the heat and put five tea bags to steep in the water. The water is going to turn a really pretty deep color. I knew at this point this was going to be good.

After 8 minutes of letting the tea steep discard the tea bags and pour 4 cups of cold (filtered) water in a pitcher, then pour in the tea water.

Now it's time to add the raspberry. Stir cautiously.

You can either put the pitcher in the refrigerator for a while or just put some ice in glass like we did. This tea is totally worth drinking right away. It's just sweet enough to be addicting and not too sweet that it's not refreshing. I think I need to keep a pitcher of this stuff at all times because we're already almost done with it. Enjoy friends!