Peach Iced Tea {With Peach Simple Syrup}

This summer, we’ve been trying to eat healthy, more mindful of what we put in our bodies, trying to avoid eating out whenever we can help it. Speaking of dining out, our go-to drink of choice has always been a nice, cold glass of southern iced tea.

While maintaining a healthy diet, I still believe in indulging every once in a while. What’s life without a cold glass of sweet iced tea in the heat of summer, right? The problem when you deny yourself such little treats are that you start to resent food and resent your choices. We don’t want that to happen.

I still had a few of those beautiful, local peaches in the fridge. So peach tea came to mind. It begins with a simple peach-infused syrup. It’s just water, sugar and a couple of ripe, juicy peaches cooked together to a syrupy consistency. This is the best way to infuse peach flavor into your iced tea. One could always muddle peach slices and add them to the tea, but making the peach syrup and tea separately means you can store them both for a few days in the fridge and mix up a drink whenever your heart desires. Not to mention, each person gets to flavor and sweeten their tea just how they like it.

This is a pretty straight-forward recipe. Once you brew the tea and chill it, and do the same with your peach syrup, it is time to pour yourself a drink.

Pour just a tablespoon of the syrup for a lightly sweetened glass of tea or pour more for a delightfully sweet, peachy tea.

Top each glass with some fresh peach slices, sit on the porch and enjoy to your heart’s content! And yes, this lil’ guy loves iced tea. And no, I don’t mind letting him have the occasional glass!!

So, brew yourself a pitcher of this southern classic and enjoy the warm weather while it lasts!

PEACH ICED TEA {WITH PEACH SIMPLE SYRUP}

You will need: (Makes 12 cups, can serve 8-12 people depending on glass size)

• Water – 10 cups, divided (I used filtered drinking water)
• Sugar – 1 1/2 cups
• Peaches – 2 large, ripe ones
• Loose black tea – 4 tsp, heaped
• Ice cubes – as needed

How to:

• Black Tea: In a large saucepan, bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add the tea, stir and remove from heat. Cover and steep for 4-5 minutes. Strain with a fine mesh sieve, cool this concoction to room temperature. Combine with 4 more cups of water in a large pitcher or beverage bottle and store in the refrigerator till needed.
• Peach Simple Syrup: Peel, pit and finely chop 2 large peaches. In a saucepan, bring 2 cups of water, 1 1/2 cups of sugar and peaches to a gentle boil. Continue boiling for 5 minutes till sugar is dissolved and peaches are soft. Mash the peaches well with a thick ladle or a potato masher. Remove from heat, cover and bring this mixture to room temperature or till it is lukewarm. Strain the syrup using a fine mesh sieve, pressing down on the peach pulp to extract as much of the syrupy goodness as possible. Store in a tightly closed glass jar in the refrigerator till needed.
• Peach Iced Tea: To make a drink, add ice cubes to a glass and fill 3/4th of the way with the cold black tea. Fill the rest of the way with the chilled peach syrup. Add a couple of slices of juicy peaches if you wish. Stir and enjoy!

Notes:

• Add as much or as little of the peach syrup as you like for each glass of iced tea. But if you are serving a large crowd, you can simply mix them up ahead of time in a large pitcher.
• I used loose black tea from India. You can use unflavored black tea bags as well. Do not steep the tea for more than 5 minutes as it will start to turn bitter after that.
• Another neat trick to ensure your tea is not watered down by the melting ice is to freeze some of the tea in an ice tray and add those to your drink.
• I imagine one can make honey-lemon iced tea in the same manner by making a simple honey and lemon infused syrup. Have you any more ideas, guys?

We loved how this turned out and I’ve already received instructions to make this again before summer is over!

And the peach syrup is quite versatile as well. We drizzled some over Indian-style whole wheat banana pancakes for breakfast just this morning and it was absolutely heavenly!!

So tell me, are you an iced tea fan? Do you add any flavorings or are you an iced tea purist? Have you tried peach iced tea? Do share.

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I am sharing this over at Angie’s amazing blog link party at The Novice Gardener and Saucy Saturdays.