Summer Juice Blend
A blend of fruit and berry juices with a sweet shock of cinnamon.
Ingredients
- 64 oz apple juice
- 64 oz pineapple juice (from concentrate is usually easiest to get)
- 64 oz orange juice (make sure not to get any with added Vitamin C, as that makes the entire drink bitter)
- 16 oz fresh blackberries
- 10-15 cinnamon sticks
- 1-1.5 cups sugar to taste
- 2 cups water
Directions
- Mix the pineapple concentrate with water according to the package directions, and combine with the apple and orange juices in a large bowl. Set aside.
- Puree the blackberries in a food processor.
- Take the resulting berry pulp and combine it in a pot with the water, sugar, and cinnamon sticks.
- Heat until boiling, stirring periodically.
- Remove the cinnamon sticks, rinse them off, and set them aside. Be careful as they’ll be quite hot!
- Use a flexible spatula to strain the remaining blackberry-cinnamon-sugar mix through a fine strainer, removing all of the blackberry seeds and pulp from the juice. Combine the resulting blackberry juice, the cinnamon sticks, and the juice blend from the first step.
- Optional: store the berry pulp separately and spread over bread and soft cheese (such as brie). As before, be careful handling it after straining, as it will be hot!
This stuff is inordinately delicious, I don’t mind telling you. Long ago in my early teen years, I discovered the Dragonlance campaign setting for D&D, and started researching it online to find out more about the flavor of that world (no pun intended). I stumbled onto a fan site that I sadly can no longer locate with a bunch of recipes for food that might be found in that world.
Most of it didn’t look especially appealing, but I decided to try out the Silvanesti Drinks Of Life. But I don’t like bananas and as an American I have no access to blackcurrants (on account of they’re not only not grown here but somehow still illegal in a few states?). So, being a dumb child and all, I figured that was the same thing as blackberries, which I’d had and enjoyed. I substituted the blackberries in and just gave up on the banana altogether, and honestly nothing of value was lost.
As an aside, I’ve since had Ribena blackcurrant concentrate from an import shop and that flavor is really good. Maybe it’s just that my American palate is unaccustomed to it and the novelty is what I’m really tasting, but I’d strongly recommend it to anyone that gets a chance to try. It’s light and sweet, with just a bit of tanginess, and it’s genuinely a shame that we don’t have it here.
Back to our regularly scheduled recipe backstory, though – over time I worked out a way to easily keep the blackberry seeds from getting into the drink, and as a convenient side-effect it results in a dry, strong-flavored berry pulp that goes well with bread and cheese, if you want to keep it.
The drink itself is a complex, full-flavored juice that is sweet without being cloying, cinnamon-spicy without being overwhelming, and has hints of sour and bitter that bring out the strengths of the main flavors. The process of pouring the blackberry juice into the large bowl is also weirdly satisfying since the pigment is very dense and spreads out pleasingly into the rest of the juice:
One of my co-workers a few months ago described this drink as “tasting like a holiday,” which I think is very apt given the prominence of the cinnamon. I have yet to find anyone that doesn’t like this stuff, and it always goes quick when I bring it to social events. I always make sure to keep a bit for myself, though – it’s too good not to!
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