No Sugar Added Raspberry Sweet Tea

We are still getting lots of raspberries out of the garden and what better way to use excess fruit than to add it to sweet tea!

I have found that this tea is great as soon as it’s cool but it’s even better two or three days later!

You will need 1 gallon of water, 10 tea bags (black or green, caffeinated or decaffeinated the choice is yours), 4 cups of washed fresh or frozen raspberries and 3 teaspoons of stevia (or sweetener of your choice; more about that below).

Start by putting the washed raspberries in a pot and covering them with at least a quart of water, maybe a little more if you have room in the pan.  Don’t over fill your pan like this….

or your stove will look like this….

and you will spend more time than it took to make the tea scrubbing your stove top.

Put the rest of the water (you want the total amount of water you use to equal 1 gallon) into a bigger pot with the stevia.  According to the package on my stevia tub 2 1/2 teaspoons is equal to a 1/2 cup of granulated sugar.  Most sweet tea recipes call for 1 cup of sugar, I don’t like mine that sweet, so three teaspoons is just right for me.  You could also use honey, maple syrup, or whatever your favorite sweetener is.  Any sweetener that equals between 1/2 a cup and 1 cup of sugar depending on how sweet you like it will be YUMMY!

Bring the raspberries up to a soft boil for about 4 minutes.  Then strain the raspberry “juice” into the big pot with the rest of the water and sweetener.

Bring the big pot to a boil now that all the ingredients but the tea bags are in it. As soon as it boils, remove it from the heat and add 10 tea bags.

Cut the tags off before you put them in the pot and let the tea bags steep for 10 minutes, then remove them and chill the tea in the fridge.  Serve over ice….

This is a wonderful, refreshing, summer time treat!  I can’t wait for peach season so I can try peach tea next!

This post was shared at: From The Farm Hop – Weekend Potluck –