Raspberry Cordial: Non-Alcoholic Musings: Make-it Monday!

Today is Monday and that means we're gonna start the week off right by making something! It could be a recipe, it could be a craft or as in today's idea... Raspberry Cordial! We thought it would be fun to make the beverage that inspired the name of our blog... plus it's super yummy!

First: We gathered our ingredients!

For the recipe from this book, we needed 600 g. of frozen raspberries (no sugar - just the berries), 1 1/4 cups of sugar, 4 cups of boiling water and 3 lemons. We did have 3, but only 2 made it into the picture!

Our first step was to put the berries and sugar into a saucepan and cook over medium heat stirring occasionally until all the sugar had dissolved. This was supposed to take 20-25 minutes...

We set the timer. We stirred occasionally. (Thank you to the lovely Miss Layla, who is 9 years old today, for her hand cameo in the picture below!)

But it was more like 12-15 minutes for us.We then mashed the berries and syrup thoroughly which was not hard since it was mostly mush.

Then comes the fun (and often messy) part! Pouring it through the strainer! We gave it a little extra help with the masher as well. You DO need a fine mesh strainer to get out all of the seeds.

Look at all that steamy yummyness!!

Next we squeezed 2 of the lemons and added the strained lemon juice to the strained raspberry mixture. At this point, the kitchen was smelling SO unbelievably good!

We had an extra lemon courtesy of Zao - Just in case!

Then we added the boiling water! SO close to being done!!!

We were supposed to let it cool, but we couldn't wait THAT long, so we just poured it into glasses, topped with a very thin slice of lemon and ENJOYED!