Last summer, my beautiful friend, Andrea Flores, got me hooked on sweet tea—Southern Sweet Tea, to be specific. I am now convinced that my body is one part water, and two parts sweet tea. I like it as sweet as sugar, bitter, flavored, or unflavored. I really can’t be too picky because I love it all. However, for today,  I’ve chosen a recipe to bring a little bit of summer back into the kitchen.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

Lipton Southern Sweet Tea bags

Blackberries

Strawberries

Ice cubes

This recipe is ridiculously simple! If you aren’t much of a caffeine tea drinker, you can always substitute an herbal tea of your choosing or maybe even a lemonade mix. You can easily add more fruit depending on what you like. Blackberry raspberry sounds delicious, but this week I decided to go with blackberry strawberry. You can also buy a jug of unsweetened tea, and add your fruit and some sugar if you prefer it that way. I read another recipe once that said ¾ cups sugar to every one gallon of unsweetened tea. You’ll have to decide for yourself how sweet you want your tea.

INSTRUCTIONS:

I start by heating some water in my tea kettle. Then when the water reaches a boil, I pull it off the burner and add two Lipton Sweet Tea bags. I move the tea bags around in the water for just a little while before leaving them to soak as the water cools down. I like to use two tea bags, but this will depend on how strong you like your tea and how much water your kettle holds. Personally, I like my tea kind of strong, so if I was filling a larger pitcher with sweet tea, I would do one kettle with two bags and then about half a kettle with just one bag in order to fill my pitcher to the top.

Next, I sliced my strawberries so that they would fit better in my Ninja blender. If you like bigger fruit chunks in your tea, I recommend you mash them or slice them rather than blend them. I always blend a little bit too much and end up straining some of the fruit out because I don’t want my tea to have a smoothie texture. However, I don’t do this until it has been in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. I think a lot of food tastes better after the flavors have had a little bit of time to get to know each other.

Let the tea sit in the fridge at least overnight, because lukewarm tea is kind of gross! You can use as much fruit as you’d like. Feel free to send me some photographs of your own tea creations! I would love to see what flavors you love the most, and of course, try them myself!

xx, Haley