Starbucks’ Passion Tea Lemonade (Guilt Free)

From Thindulge

Serving suggestions

An excerpt from Thindulge Blog:
Two things I love about summer are lemonade and hanging out with friends. If I happen to meet a friend at Starbucks, I tend to get this lemonade instead of an iced coffee drink. Then I heard someone made this at home and I figured I’d give it a try. It’d be a lot cheaper this way too! However, I know it’s loaded with sugar, so I invited my new friend, Swerve, to the party. Swerve is an all-natural, zero calorie sugar substitute. We’ve been hanging out for quite a while now and I highly recommend you join in the party! It’s absolutely amazing! But I digress… I was able to come up with a guilt-free version of this classic drink and I know when you make it, you’ll feel like you are sitting in your own local Starbucks!

Tags

beverages, lemonade, thindulge, iacp ebook, gf

5 bags of Tazo Passion tea
6 1/4 cups water, divided
1 1/2 cups Swerve
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 lemons, zested

DIRECTIONS
In a medium saucepan, bring Swerve, 1 1/2 cups of water and lemon zest to a boil, stirring to dissolve the Swerve. Cover, remove from heat and let steep for 15 minutes. Strain into a bowl and let cool.
Bring remaining 4 3/4 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan. Remove from heat, add the tea bags and set aside. Steep for 7-10 minutes and remove tea bags. Gently squeeze tea bags in between two spoons to get extra flavor. Let cool.
Meanwhile, juice the lemons and strain into a large pitcher. Once tea is cooled, add to the lemons. After the simple syrup is cooled, sweeten to taste. Chill.
Once cooled, serve over ice.
Here’s the skinny:
By using Swerve instead of sugar, we saved 1164 calories and 300 grams of sugar. That’s the equivalent of 75 hard candies!