Transform Classic Lemonade Into A Whipped Wonder With Just 3 Ingredients

Lemonade is a surprisingly versatile beverage — you can mix it with beer for a delightful summer shandy, or combine it with beet juice for a sweet, vibrant take on the classic. Of course, the puckery drink is also begging for a creamy transformation, which you can create through the use of three ingredients, which Jessie-Sierra Ross, cookbook author of "Seasons Around the Table: Effortless Entertaining with Floral Tablescapes & Seasonal Recipes," shared with us at Food Republic: whipped lemonade (of course), which features sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, and heavy cream. Ross explained, "The ingredients in a whipped lemonade [include] that zippy lemonade taste we all love, but it's mellowed by the added fat and sweetness of cream and condensed milk."

Ross described this zippy drink as "a bright, tart, creamy summer treat." Traditionally, she told us, we appreciate the acidity, coupled with the sweetness from the sugar in homemade lemonade. But with whipped lemonade, Ross continued, some of that acidity from the lemon "is buffered and smoothed by the dairy products" that get blended into the tart beverage, and the outcome is a "texture somewhere between a creamy milkshake and a well-blended slushie." And the dreamy pastel yellow color that the drink renders, as the white, milk-based ingredients temper the brightness of the lemonade, will have you waxing whimsical as you marvel at how easy that was to make.

Whipped lemonade is very simple to make — all you do is combine lemonade, heavy cream, and sweetened condensed milk in a blender, add in ice cubes, and blend until the mix is smooth. That's literally all it takes, but as Jessie-Sierra Ross relayed to us, "Nobody wants to accidentally curdle the milk when making whipped lemonade!" According to her, lemon juice, because it's acidic, needs to be handled a bit differently than other fruit juices when mixed with cream and condensed milk.

She beseeched us to not skip — or skimp — on using the condensed milk, because it's "a concentrated, stabilized, and sweetened canned dairy product." While it's typically used in sweets for baking, and lasts forever when stored properly in your pantry (unless you're making it at home), she said, the sugar content in it keeps the proteins from clotting when mixed with the acidity of the lemonade. And speaking of the lemon, Ross also suggested making sure the juice is ice cold before pouring it into the blender. She said, "This helps you use less total ice, and avoid the dreaded 'watered down' effect" that can occur when you use too many cubes, and the blended mix starts to melt from external warmth.