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This quick homemade Sprite recipe gives you that bright, lemon-lime soda flavor without the corn syrup, preservatives, or artificial ingredients. Sweetened naturally with maple syrup and ready in just 5 minutes, it’s a refreshing, lower sugar alternative to traditional soft drinks and especially helpful on high-nausea days. Serve these with lemon lime electrolyte ice cubes for a fun mocktail.
A Quick Look: Homemade Sprite
- Prep time: Only 5 minutes.
- Servings – This will make 1 to 2 drinks.
- Main ingredients: Fresh lemon juice, lime juice, maple syrup, and sparkling water.
- When to serve: For a refreshing drink, a healthy replacement for soft drinks, or for high-nausea days.
- Dietary information: This recipe fits a Mediterranean diet, gluten free, and dairy free, as well as vegetarian. This would not fit a HYH diet or low histamine diet due to the citrus. For those dietary restrictions, try this blueberry mocktail instead.
- Why you’ll love it: This simple recipe has all the best flavors of a lemon lime soda but without the preservatives and artificial flavors, or corn syrup. I find it incredibly helpful for high nausea days when I’m craving Sprite, but want a lower sugar content.
Although a little less sweet with a stronger citrus flavor, this copycat Sprite recipe has been amazing for me when I had severe nausea with pregnancy or vestibular migraine attack days. For a similar recipe that’s also helpful for nausea, you can try this ginger beer mocktail or homemade ginger ale.
Table of Contents
Ingredients
- Fresh lemon juice – Regular seedless lemons recommended over Meyer lemons for a more traditional, tart flavor. You could use Meyer lemons for less acidity.
- Fresh lime juice – Regular limes work best for this recipe, and freshly squeezed will give you the best flavor over bottled lime juice.
- Sweetener – I used maple syrup, but this can be substituted with agave because both will provide sweetness and mix well with cooler liquids without clumping, unlike honey. The sweetness helps tone down the acidity of the citrus, and is a lot less time consuming than making a simple syrup by boiling the lemon and lime peels with sugar. If you did want to use honey, you’d have to dissolve it into warm or hot water first to create a simple honey syrup, then mix it into the glass.
- Sparkling water – Although any sparkling water will work for this recipe, it’s ideal to use one with high carbonation, like Topo Chico, which I find best for mixing mocktails. It stays fizzy for longer! Club soda will also work.
- Himalayan sea salt – This can help with hydration, but also Sprite contains sodium benzoate and sodium citrate. Here we try to replicate that same flavor.
Lemon Lime Ice Cubes
These are optional ice cubes, better for if you want to make this into a fun lemon lime mocktail. Since I tend to drink this on days I don’t feel well, I though what if I could make my Sprite more hydrating? That’s how I came up with these flavored ice cubes.
All you need is to combine coconut water with slices of lemon and lime, and I add candied ginger for a complimentary flavor that’s also helpful for an upset stomach. You could substitute this with fresh ginger as well.
How to Make a Natural Sprite
Step 1: Start by mixing together the lemon lime base. Pour the lemon juice, lime juice, agave or maple syrup, and sea salt into a glass and whisk together till fully combined. You can also use a handheld blender.
Step 2: Pour the mixture into the bottom of a tall glass, add ice and then top with sparkling water. Stir to combine. Adjust any flavorings if you want more lemon or lime flavor, or sweetness.
For the ice cubes:
Step 1: Add fresh lemon and lime slices to an ice cube tray or muffin tin. Add a small slice of ginger to each tray, then top with coconut water.
Step 2: Freeze for 8-12 hours, or overnight, then add them to a separate container or freezer bag to use as needed.
Make Ahead Instructions
Although it’s tricky to make this healthy lemon lime soda ahead without losing the carbonation, you can adjust the recipe below for more servings, and then use the lemon lime base as needed to quickly make drinks.
2-3 tablespoons of the concentrate in each glass should be enough to make a drink, or you can adjust this to however strong you want the flavor. The base can also be frozen into cubes and added to sparkling water as needed – this method would be ideal for sick days!
Recipe FAQ
It’s pretty close, but it definitely has more distinct citrus flavors and is also less cloyingly sweet. It tastes more natural and fresh – like a healthy lemon lime soda.
I would strongly encourage using fresh citrus juices. I have tried all different kinds of bottled and it just never seems to compare to freshly squeezed. That being said, you can use bottled in a pinch – it’s just not the best flavor.
To make this sugar free, you can use monk fruit or stevia drops to taste instead of maple syrup or agave.
Love this recipe? Please leave a 5-star 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 review in the recipe card! Don’t forget to tag me @thedizzycook on Facebook and Instagram, and follow along on Pinterest for more great recipes!
Homemade Sprite (Quick & Easy)
Ingredients
- 1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup or agave, Light maple syrup recommended
- pinch Himalayan sea salt, Redmond's or similar
- 1½ cups sparkling water, Topo chico recommended
Instructions
- Use a handheld whisk/blender to blend together the lemon juice, lime juice, maple syrup or agave and pinch of salt till fully combined.
- Pour the mixture into a tall glass and add ice and sparkling water. Stir and taste, adjusting any flavors you like.
Notes
- For the lemon lime electrolyte ice cubes – Combine 1 lemon, sliced into half moons, 2 limes, sliced into half moons, 12 pieces candied ginger or fresh ginger, and around 2 cups of coconut water. Divide the slices of lemon and limes into ice cube molds and add candied ginger. Fill with coconut water for added electrolytes (or regular water), then freeze for up to 12 hours.
- Fresh squeezed lemon and lime juice is always best for the most ideal flavor.
- Topo chico is recommending for the high carbonation, which is most similar to soft drinks, but any sparkling water or club soda could be used.
- If you want to substitute honey as a sweetener, you would need to first blend it with warm or hot water, creating a simple honey syrup, then add it to the drink. Adding it directly may cause clumping.
- You can also substitute a zero sugar sweetener like stevia drops or monk fruit, but it will alter the flavor.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I made this today about 3 times because we had a warm day! ☀️🍋🟩 It’s so fresh and hard to believe it’s actually healthy. I used honey for sweetener, yum! 🍯
So refreshing!! We loved it. Super easy too.