Fruit. Ice. Whirl. Mmmm.

Watermelon, strawberries, pineapple - just about any fruit - make a refreshing summer cooler when simply blended with a few ingredients.

By JANET K. KEELER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 6, 2000

[Times photo: Patty Yablonski] Blueberry-Mint Lemonade combines fresh berries, homemade mint syrup, freshly squeezed lemon juice and cold water for a zippy refresher courtesy of Martha Stewart.

Pretty to behold and even lovelier to taste, an ice-cold fresh fruit drink does more than cool the savage summer beast.

For one, the flavorful fruit wakes up taste buds dulled by diet sodas and overly sweetened commercial juices. One sip of Pink Flamingo Punch, fueled by watermelon and strawberries, and your mouth will holler for another, and then another. Who knew your taste buds had so much in common with Rip Van Winkle?

At this time of year, when both humidity and summer fruit are peaking, a fresh fruitade makes perfect sense. Is that watermelon in the fridge getting a little past picnic fare? Throw it (minus the rind and seeds) into the blender with ice and sugar (or a sugar substitute) and get your vitamins and flavor in a slush. Do you have a bag of blueberries in the freezer aching to be eaten? Mix them in the blender with a can of frozen lemonade, pour into a glass and then top with seltzer. That and a little paper umbrella, and you're ready for a minibreak from the kids, the boss, the heat and the everyday hullabaloo.

Healthwise, you get more vitamins from a fresh fruit drink than from slamming back a soda. But if you are watching calories, sugar or fruit intake, you'll have to figure the drinks into your daily allowances. The ultimate diet hydrator, of course, is water.

Making fresh fruit drinks can be as complicated or as simple as time and patience allow. Mexico's colorful aguas frescas (fresh waters) are the simplest and perhaps the most thirst-quenching fruit drinks for a hot day. Made from all kinds of fruits -- cantaloupes, honeydews, mangoes, papayas, red seedless grapes or strawberries -- aguas frescas beckon to the thirsty from glass barrels at Mexican street stands. In the blender go fruit, cold water, ice, sweetener and a splash of lime or lemon juice and, muy delicioso, you've got sweet relief in a glass.

Simpler still, and sugarless, is a new line of blender-drink mixes from Crystal Light, called Frosted Escapes, that includes a pina colada version to which you just add water and ice. With the addition of hulled strawberries, you can cut the coconut taste and add more fresh flavor. Chunks of fresh pineapple also enhance the drink.

It will hardly surprise you that some of the more complicated and time-consuming recipes for fresh fruit drinks come from Martha Stewart. If you have a juice extractor, her recipes for Blueberry-Mint Lemonade and Sparkling Ginger-Plum Lemonade are ones to try. They are delicious. Without the juice extractor, the fruit is pureed in a blender or food processor and then passed through a fine-mesh sieve to separate the solids from the juice. This method, in concert with the other steps, takes about an hour -- too much time for most people to spend on a recipe that serves six.

When buying fruit for drinks, look for the ripest ones because they tend to be sweeter. The sweeter the fruit, the less sugar or artificial sweetener you'll need to add and the more fruity the drink will taste. This month's Gourmet magazine offers tips for selecting a ripe watermelon. Look at the spot where the fruit sat on the ground, and if it's creamy white, the melon is not ripe. Look for one that has a yellowish-orange spot. Though it's not foolproof, when buying cut watermelon, take the piece with the deeper color. Also, unlike watermelon with seeds, the seedless varieties do not continue to ripen after they are picked. (See the monthly To Market column, Page 3D, for more tips on how buy fruit.)

You'll need to sample the drinks before you serve them even if you have followed a recipe exactly. Your mouth should pucker with flavor, not from bitterness. If the face you make after you take a sip is not a happy one, add more sugar.

When it comes to ice, size matters, writes New York City food consultant Bruce Weinstein in his new book The Ultimate Party Drink Book (William Morrow, 2000).

"The smaller, the better," he writes. "Smaller ice cubes blend into smoother frozen drinks. Smaller cubes quickly chill a shaken drink without watering it down."

Weinstein maintains that the temperature of the ice also makes a difference. Ice just out of the freezer is extremely hard. For a smoother frozen drink, he recommends letting the ice sit at room temperature for a few minutes, pour off the melted water, and then put it in the blender. For fruit drinks on ice, Weinstein suggests making frozen fruit juice cubes in mini-ice trays and then floating those in the drinks. The benefit here is that the flavor of the drink is not diluted by water.

After you've settled the ice issue, you'll need to address the alcohol issue. To spike or not to spike? That all depends, of course, on who is partaking and, for some people, the time of day. If you want to add a punch to your thirst-quenchers, think vodka, rum and tequila. Rum goes nicely with any of the tropical fruit drinks and is the classic liquor added to the daiquiri. Vodka and tequila also hold up well with strong fruit flavors.

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