Summer Drinks

It is summer time in India esp North India gets really hot and with kids at home you need to keep them hydrated as they want to run out and play and do lots of swimming . While I make lots of lemonade, my kids are ready for experiments and trying out different drinks. Today we will do simple Bael (Wood Apple) Drink and Mango drink.

Bael Cooler

Ingredients

• Bael (wood apple)-1 no
• Sugar 2-4 tbsp
• Lemon juice- 2 tsp
• Salt/black salt to taste
• Roasted cumin powder
• Bowl of water

Method

1. Peel the bael by breaking it and put all the pulp in a bowl of water and leave it for 30 min to one hour
2. Mash the bael in water and sieve the water out. Don’t increase the water quantity as we want it more like a concentrate
3. Mix sugar ( you can increase and reduce or skip as per your taste), salt and cumin powder in the concentrate
4. Put ice in a glass and pour the concentrate in the glass about 3/4
5. Add little lemon juice and put some water in the glass . Stir it
6. sprinkle some more cumin powder and serve it chilled
7. Concentrate can be kept for a week or so

Mango cooler

This was created to curb the usage of tetra pack juices. I had tried only doing juice with fresh ripe manages but kids said it is tastier to have raw mango juice.  So I came up with this combination of the two !!

Ingredients

• Ripe Alphonso Mango  1 to 2 nos
• Raw Mango 1 nos
• Sugar 4-6 tbsp depending upon your taste and sweetness of your mango
• Water 1.5 liter

Method

1. Peel and chop the mangoes
2. Put in a big pan with water and sugar
3. Let it boil for 15-20 min or till mango becomes soft
4. Pass the juice through a sieve and let it cool
5. Refrigerate the same for 2 hours and serve chilled mango juice

Do share once you try making the two. These two have become top favourite with my kids after lemonade