Blackberry Agua Fresca

Hubby and I have been taking a parenting class with a group of our friends in hopes of finding better strategies to keep the peace with our kids when times get challenging (can anyone relate to that?). We rotate houses each week and whoever hosts provides a light dinner to fill everyone's bellies before we sit down to some pretty intense -- but fun -- conversation. One of my friends is a total closet gourmand and while she couldn't be more humble about her culinary talents, just one taste of her food betrays how awesome she is in the kitchen.

As we sat around eating before class started, my hubby turned to me, offered up his drink and said, "Catherine, taste this, it's delicious!" I took a sip and agreed completely. The drink had a beautiful purple color and was unbelievably refreshing -- only I had no idea what it was. I asked my friend and she said it was an agua fresca. It sounded so fancy, but she said it couldn't be more simple to prepare. All she did was make a simple syrup (sugar and water) with fresh ginger and mix in frozen blackberries. I knew I had to try and replicate it for weelicious.

The next day, I set out to make a much simpler version of agua fresca for a group of kids coming over for a pool party. Kenya was ready as ever to be my taste tester as we took to the blender and whipped up my own version of a blackberry agua fresca. Kenya took one sip and exclaimed "it tastes like pomegranate juice"! Only my kid.

After I let it chill, I offered the kids glasses asking, "would you like to try some blackberry agua fresca?" The kids looked at me totally perplexed until their mothers leaned in to them and said, "it's juice." That's all it took. Within minutes it was all gone, the only evidence being the purple mustaches on everyone's happy little faces. My husband, however, was less than happy to discover the empty pitcher when he got home from work. I'll save that for our next parenting class.