A Less Sugary Lemonade
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 at 4:00AM 
I love lemonade, but have you ever looked at the label? Sugar usually comes before lemon juice! How to enjoy my favorite summer refresher without sucking down my weight in sucrose?
Well, if I could somehow make the lemonade less tart then I wouldn’t need as much sugar to balance it out. Solution: the orange-hued Meyer lemon, a hybrid between a lemon and a tangerine, which has a natural floral-like sweetness and lower acidity than a traditional lip-puckering lemon.
Now that I was using less sugar, I had to consider its form. Typically, I make lemonade with simple syrup (a combination of sugar and water that’s been heated until the sugar dissolves) because this combines effortlessly into the cold water and lemon juice. But in a moment of food science inspiration, I recalled this tidbit from a cocktail class: when heated, sucrose turns into higher viscosity fructose, from which our palates don’t register flavor as well. So, by keeping all the ingredients cold and using a little elbow grease, I could make the lemonade taste sweeter with less sugar.
Finally, top the lemonade off with a splash of sparkling water; there’s nothing like a little effervescence to make a person feel refreshed.