Citrus Lemonade Concentrate

I've been reading the back posts over at Canning Granny's blog (one of my new favourites), and came across these two posts, Lemon Squash (or Lemonade) and Orange Squash and I knew I had to try that!  I just happened to have a bunch of lemons and limes in the fridge, too, so I set about making a Citrus Squash.

Let me tell you, a little bit of lime goes a long, long way!

I of course, didn't follow the directions.  :)  Not completely.  Next time I will, lol.

For this batch, I think I had more limes than lemons, but limes are small, so I kind of figured a two to one ratio.  I washed them, then heated them, saving the liquid.  Well heating them did such an AMAZING job of loosening up the insides, and I don't have a juicer, so after squeezing out as much juice and pulp as I could with my hands, I tossed them back into the reserved water, to see if any more juice would come out.

I didn't want to waste the pulp, and I tend not to do things in small batches, so I juiced every one of them.  I got 4 cups of juice and pulp.

After reheating the reserved water, I pulled out the lemon and lime shells and measured the water.  8 Cups.

I sincerely thought about tossing the extra 4 cups, but it was such a pretty yellow colour, and smelled very much like lemonade...  In it went.  A total of 12 cups of lemon/lime liquid.  I didn't want to make it too sweet, so I started with 6 cups of sugar (double the original recipe for 2 cups of juice), added the lemon zest, and brought it to a boil.

Then we did a taste test.  Sour?  Not exactly.  Tart?  Yes, but...  The taste of the lime was just overpowering.

I added 2 more cups of sugar and brought it back to a boil.  Another taste test.  The lime was still overpowering.

I looked through the fridge and cupboards for something that would tone it down.  I settled on cinnamon, added a bit to my glass, and tasted again.  That's better.

I added three heaping teaspoons of cinnamon to the pot and brought it back to a boil.  It smells and looks like apple cider.  It still tastes like lime, but not overpoweringly.  A bit of mint would probably help, but I didn't think of that until after I had jarred and processed it.  Drinkable, at any rate, which is good, since I ended up with 18 half pints.

And, oh yeah, the pickle factory is still in business...