Archive for: soda
Soda is a daily indulgence for some and an occasional treat for other, but no matter how often you have some of the sweet, bubbly beverage, you probably haven’t considered making your own soda at home. Sodas are actually very simple concoctions, consisting of a sweet, concentrated syrup that is cut with carbonated water to give it a light, bubbly, refreshing feel. Homemade Soda: 200 Recipes for Making & Using Fruit Sodas & Fizzy Juices, Sparkling Waters, Root Beers & Cola Brews, Herbal & Healing Waters, & Floats, & Other Carbonated Concoctions is a book dedicated to this subject, offering detailed instructions and a huge variety of recipes for making your own sodas at home.
You shouldn’t expect to find the secret recipe for Coke or for Pepsi in this book, but you can expect to find recipes for colas and root beers using all natural ingredients such as Cherry Cola and 7-Root Beer (which is made with actual root vegetables), as well as homemade versions of childhood favorites like Yoo-Hoo chocolate soda. The recipes really cover a huge range of flavors and types, so you’ll never get bored of the options and can easily learn how to apply your new soda-making knowledge to other ingredients to create your own flavors. The book first provides you with an overview of soda making equipment and common ingredients, like sweeteners, that you will need when making your own soda. You don’t need special equipment, but having things like soda siphon will come in handy if you plan on making a lot of soda. In addition to the drink recipes, there are also quite a few recipes that use the soda or syrups, such as Pork Shoulder Braised with Ginger Ale.
The book has a fun, retro feel to it that is meant to evoke memories of going to a soda fountain. The photos are vibrant and definitely make you feel like having a drink (of soda, of course) as you read through it. Some of the recipes require a little bit more of a time commitment to make than others, but making your own sodas is, overall, a very simple process. It is something that is easy to get started with and, once you’re making your own syrups with fresh fruits and natural ingredients, you’ll probably find that you’re doing it a lot more often.
I have been itching to make some root beer cupcakes with my bottle of Sonoma Syrup Co’s Root Beer Syrup because the syrup is so flavorful and seemed like it would pass on a great root beer flavor into baked goods. The syrup has concentrated the root beer flavor and it comes through much more strongly (and more naturally) than using root beer-flavored extract might. Once I had cupcakes, I decided to keep on going and turn them into Root Beer Float Cupcakes by topping them off with vanilla ice cream
The cupcakes are moist and have a nice, tight crumb that seems to pass on more flavor in each bite. You can really taste the root beer, and the hint of vanilla – which many root beers also include – rounds out the flavor. They can be eaten plain, but they’re at their best when served with ice cream and a drizzle of root beer syrup. To get the ice cream in there, I carved a small hole out of the top of each cupcake, just as I do when I’m going to make filled cupcakes, and placed a small scoop of ice cream on top. I drizzled the cupcakes with a little bit of root beer glaze to give them a little extra flavor and a root beer float look. You can store the ice cream-topped cupcakes in the freezer for a few hours before serving, if desired.
If you don’t have the root beer syrup, and don’t want to buy it, you have two options to make these cupcakes. The first option is to simply use milk in place of the root beer syrup in the recipe and add in about 1 tsp root beer flavored extract. The second option (and a better option, in my opinion) is to buy some good, non-diet root beer (12-oz), pour it into a sauce pan and reduce it until you have about 1/3 cup. This will take about 15-20 minutes over medium-high heat and will concentrate the root beer flavor, imitating the syrup that I used.
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Root beer is one of my favorite soda flavors, so I couldn’t walk by the bottles of Sonoma Syrup Co.’s Root Beer Soda Syrup in Williams Sonoma without picking one up to try (they had cola and lemon-lime, too). I like a lot of the other products from Sonoma Syrup Co, including their vanilla bean crush, so I had fairly high hopes for the root beer. Plus, the idea of making my own gourmet soda was pretty appealing, especially because the instructions on the bottle just called for mixing the syrup with chilled soda water and giving it a stir before serving. The root beer and other sodas are all hand made using natural ingredients, cane sugar and natural flavorings. The root beer includes sweet birch, caramel, cinnamon, sassafras and vanilla.
The root beer syrup didn’t disappoint me. It was sweet, flavorful and peppery. It actually reminded me a lot of those little root beer barrel candies that you find at some candy stores (I used to buy those all the time when I was young!). The best thing about the syrup is that you can mix up however much soda you want – even if it’s just a little bit -at one time without having to open a can or a big bottle. The whole bottle makes about 25 8-oz servings. You can also adjust the amount of flavoring in your soda, if you prefer it stronger or weaker. I found that adding a little extra when I was making root beer floats made them even better. Because this syrup is really a concentrate (all of the carbonation comes from the soda water you mix it with), you could also use this as a flavoring for other recipes if you don’t want to drink down the whole bottle.
I was recently watching a documentary on the history of the Coca-Cola company and it got me thinking about whether I could use Coke in baking. I’ve used sodas, like root beer, before in barbecue sauces, but would the flavor of the soda come through in a cake or other baked good? I didn’t have to wonder for long because it turns out that there are lots of recipes that use Coca-Cola right on the company’s website, including a recipe for a Cola Cake (pdf).
The cake uses Coke in both the cake and the glaze that covers it, and it was almost exactly what I had in mind for a recipe that used coke, since it used quite a bit of soda. It’s a chocolate sheet cake topped with a Coke-infused glaze and lots of crunchy pecans. Now, I said “almost exactly” because I made some changes to this recipe right off the bat. I reduced the amount of butter called for slightly, used less cocoa powder to make sure the Coke flavor came out and added a bit of salt to contrast the sugars in the cake. The result was really delicious, so I am confident in saying that Coke works out well as an addition to some baked goods!
I like that this cake is baked and served in the same dish because it’s easy and unfussy to do so. This is especially true because the glaze is poured on while the cake is hot, so you don’t need any frosting for it. The cake is very, very moist and very soft. It has a nice chocolate flavor to it and you can just get a hint of the spicy flavor of the Coke through it. This is helped along by a butter and Coca-Cola glaze that is poured over the cake just as it comes out of the oven. Pecans are used in the topping to add crunch to the cake, and they’re slightly candied by the butter-Coke mixture before they make it on to the cake. One great finishing touch is to make sure to use toasted, salted pecans for the topping. That extra salt really makes for the perfect contrast and just might make this cake as popular as the soda featured in it!
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Beer is a major ingredient in a lot of recipes. Guinness, in particular – not to mention other dark stouts – works its way into quite a few baked goods. It pairs especially well with chocolate because of its naturally dark, chocolaty flavor, so Guinness Cupcakes and Guinness Chocolate Cake are fairly common. Guinness Brownies are not seen quite as often, but work for much the same reason. Unless St Patrick’s Day is coming up, I don’t usually keep Guinness around so I decided to play around and see if I could get the brownies to work with something I always have on hand: root beer.
I know that root beer isn’t really beer, but once the idea popped into my head I couldn’t resist trying it out. I used a bottle of Dr Brown’s root beer, pouring most into the brownies and saving a few sips for myself.
Most of the recipes I’ve seen for Guinness brownies include both dark and white chocolate, which is an unusual touch for a chocolate brownie recipe. The sweetness of the white chocolate covers up some of the bitterness of the beer and gives the brownies a smoother finish. I included the white chocolate in this recipe, too, but in my case I was hoping to temper the strength of the darker chocolate and let the root beer flavor come through.
In the end, the flavor of the root beer is definitely overpowered by chocolate – and that’s not really a bad thing for a batch of brownies! They are very chocolaty and have a slightly unusual texture to them. They’re fudgy and definitely give you a melt-in-your-mouth effect, but they are not dense or very chewy. I believe that is the root beer’s signature addition to these treats.
These brownies are much better the day after they are made: fudgier, moister and with a deeper flavor. Make them in the evening, then wrap them up and slice them the next day!
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