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» Frozen fruit used as ice cubes: Colorful, fun, and deliciously refreshing! 【Taste test】

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Frozen fruit used as ice cubes: Colorful, fun, and deliciously refreshing! 【Taste test】

Kay May 11, 2016
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Using frozen fruit as ice cubes in your drink sounded like an awesome idea, so we tried it with seven different fruits, and here’s how they turned out!

With the weather now getting warmer here in Tokyo, ice-cold drinks are suddenly looking more and more attractive. So when we saw Japanese translator Riko Murai’s post on Twitter sharing the delightful way she was having club soda, well, we just had to give it a try.

Murai’s Tweet showed her using some frozen peeled lemons as ice in her drink, which we had to say looked pretty darned good, and we weren’t surprised it was attracting considerable attention, with the post having been retweeted over 25,000 times.

But why stop at lemons? We thought frozen fruit ice was such a brilliant idea that we decided to try it with seven different fruits!

We began by going out and buying the seven fruits: lemon, orange, apple, kiwi, strawberry, grapefruit and pineapple.

We then peeled and cut them….

…and froze them overnight. Now all we needed was club soda, and we were set!

We began with lemon, which we had seen in Murai’s tweet. We placed the pieces of lemon, which were frozen solid, into our cup and poured the soda over it, enjoying the refreshing fizzing sound and sensation. It was already starting to feel like summer!

▼ Here’s what our drink with lemon ice looked like.

We took a sip, and the drink was refreshingly ice-cold. But the best part was that even though it was plain soda water, the lemon ice gave it a subtle scent and tangy flavor, turning it into a stylish and fun drink. We thought it would go perfectly well with other soda beverages or even mixed with alcohol and spirits like shochu, making it a definite delight in the warm summer months!

▼ The frozen lemon gave the drink a subtle tangy flavor and a good deal of sophistication as well!

Of course, we were excited to try the other fruits too and see which frozen fruit made the best ice substitute. We moved on to the other citrus fruits, orange and grapefruit, which as you might expect, were a good match with the soda, just like the lemon.

▼ The orange added a lovely splash of bright color to the drink.

▼ The grapefruit was also nice, but we thought it had a bit of a bitter flavor, which may not exactly be to everyone’s liking.

▼ Here’s the apple, which we thought smelled quite sweet and had the nicest aroma.

The strawberries, unsurprisingly, take the prize for the best-looking ice fruit. They may not be as fragrant as the apples, but boy, do they look sumptuous. In fact, we think this could be made into an actual product and should certainly be a hit with the ladies.

▼ We also tried the kiwi, which looked cute in its light green color.

And last but not least, here’s the pineapple, which we thought tasted the best! It may depend on the individual pineapple you use, but the sweet taste probably makes it a little more child-friendly than the lemon, and the tropical scent really gives the drink a summery feel.

Of course, we couldn’t resist munching on the frozen fruits themselves. It was just too much fun crunching on the half-frozen, half-melted fruits in the drink, especially the strawberries!

And since we still had plenty of fruit, we also decided to try all the fruits together at once. We used a large glass for this to accommodate the large amount of fruit it would involve.

▼ And here it is: The “all seven frozen fruits in one” drink!

All that colorful fruit certainly was a feast for our eyes, and it tasted absolutely sweet as well! The flavor and scent were much stronger than with just one fruit, and once again, we found ourselves thinking, “Hey, this could really be a big hit if they served it at cafes.”

Freezing fruit and putting it your drink seems like a simple enough idea, but it was something we hadn’t thought of, and we have to admit we had fun trying it. It should be worth experimenting with other fruits and drinks other than soda water, including alcohol. Why not try it the next warm day you have plenty of fruit lying around?