The Orange Julius is a drink that was created and first sold by Julius Freed in Los Angeles in 1926. His business grew and in 1964 the Orange Julius was actually the official drink of the New York World's Fair! When I was a kid in the 1980's it was a popular drink stand in shopping malls all across the United States. The company was sold to Dairy Queen in 1987 and you can still get an Orange Julius there today, but for some reason it doesn't taste the same as the original.

Even though they used to make the drink right in front of you, it was tricky to figure out exactly how to make one at home because they used a powdered "secret ingredient." When I was a kid we would always try to copy it at home but we never got it quite right. This copycat recipe tastes just like I remember it and uses powdered egg whites and powdered milk as the "secret ingredient".

Here is what you will need:

Blender

1 cup fresh orange juice - 4 Oranges (squeeze your own fresh orange juice)

1/4 cup Simple Syrup (sugar and water)

2 tsp Powdered Egg Whites (relatively hard to find and I ordered it from Amazon)

2 tsp Powdered Milk (easy to find in baking section of grocery store)

1/2 tsp Vanilla (you can also use powdered vanilla if you want or have access to it)

1 cup Ice (crushed or cubes)

Step 1: Make Simple Syrup

Simple syrup is well...really simple. It is just water and sugar. Some people make it as a water to sugar ratio of 1:2 (1 cup water and 2 cups sugar) but for this recipe I'm going to use 1:1. We keep simple syrup in our refrigerator to sweeten iced coffee and other cold drinks. To make it all you need to do is combine the sugar and the water in a pot over medium heat and bring it to a boil until all the sugar dissolves.

Step 2: Squeeze Oranges (1 Cup) & Add to Blender

Slice your oranges and use a juicer (or just squeeze them real hard) until you have about 1 cup of fresh juice. This took me about 4 oranges in total. Then add the fresh orange juice to your blender. I used a strainer in this step just to make sure I didn't have any seeds in the juice and to strain out some of the pulp. The strainer is an optional step as you might want to keep the pulp in.