Homemade Soda - Andrew Schloss

Homemade Soda: 200 Recipes for Making & Using Fruit Soda





At the heart of Homemade Soda is the 200 recipes for making (and using) an incredible variety of sodas and sparkling drinks of all kinds. The recipes are both startlingly inventive -- and refreshingly delicious. The book starts off with a fairly in-depth description of different ways that you can make these sodas at home, and each recipe includes the appropriate variants, along with an alcoholic "mixology" section for each recipe. However, the quickest and easiest way will surely be to use the SodaStream, which works excellent for making any of these specialities.

In the recipe section, the first chapter is Sparkling Waters, which includes seltzers with flavors like caramel, goji, honey, cardamom, honeydew, mint, and chile, as well as vitamin-infused sparkling waters. The second chapter is all about fruit sodas. The recipes often bring different flavors together, like orange-honey-ginger ale, or strawberry pomegranate. Next is Root Beers & Cola Brews, which includes a variety of root beers, as well as what is thought to be the original Coca-cola recipe, in addition to their own cola recipes, ginger ales, and other naturally fermented drinks, like kambucha.

Chapter four is Herbal Sodas & Healing Waters, which includes superfood ingredients like acai, licorice, basil, and lavender. After that is Tizzy Juices, which includes fruit juices of all types -- with a twist -- like fermented apple, vanilla pear, pomegranate cranberry, cucumber mint, and a recipe with papaya, orange, lime and vanilla. There is nothing like a fresh fruit soda on a hot summer's day... so refreshing! Sparkling Teas, Coffees & Chocolates offers many more recipes that you won't find in stores, like coconut green tea, hazelnut coffee, and cocoa chile. At the start of the chapter, Cream Sodas, Egg Creams & Floats (as for all the chapters), there is a brief history, which in this case explains why there is generally no cream or eggs in these. Yet the book offers some with milk, and even a sparkling egg nog,alongside recipes for strawberry, almond-honey and banana cream sodas, dulce de leche, and mango lassi effervescent drinks as well.

Then there is a chapter devoted to exotic Shrubs, Switchels & Other Vinegar Drinks, with recipes like watermelon mint cordial. Given how healthy apple cider vinegar is said to be, we will definitely be trying some of these, like the sweet and sour apple cider. The last two chapters of Homemade Soda involve cooking with sodas, and includes delicious recipes like cola chili and root beer baked beans, as well as desserts, like lemon-lime cheesecake and ginger ale gingerbread. The 336-page book finishes up with an excellent index and recommended places to get obscure ingredients.

Homemade Soda is a perfect accompaniment to the SodaStream machine, to assist you in making all kinds of delicious beverages at home!

- CuteEverythingcom, Amazon.com


You know how some things once known cannot be unknown? That's how I feel about the ingredients for Cola and various Root Beers. Thinking about drinking Kitchen Bouquet Browning Liquid makes my rejection of commercial soda all the more sincere. I'm a changed woman. (Ok, on vacation I am totally going to relapse. Let's be honest.) Homemade Soda sometimes gave me that feeling you get watching an evening news report on food standards for your child's chicken nugget versus Fido's pet food. Sure, it's called 7-Root Beer, but actual roots? Carrots and parsnips and licorice? I think I'll go back to Grapefruit Soda, it tastes like a Fresca without the artificial kick in the finish. Strawberry Pineapple Soda is ridiculously easy to make the syrup for. Homemade Soda has the right combination of accessible and outrageous. I like a cookbook that blends things I can make tonight with things I'll never make but tell myself I'll try next weekend, or maybe the one after but certainly by the end of the month...

Graphically, the book is beautiful. The font and layout has a strong early seventies feel which is an emotional heyday for me and soda. Schloss gives clear and careful instructions for a variety of methods, from a simple mix with seltzer to using a siphon or fermenting your own concoctions. I think this is the next foodie craze - can you imagine throwing a party where all the mixers or soft drinks were made in your own kitchen? Go ahead and cater the main course, everyone will still talk about your mad kitchen skills the next day. Especially if you mix up a batch of Blazing Inferno Chile water. Homemade Soda is comprehensive, fun and beautifully designed. I'm going to be using it as a gift book this year, as I continue my crusade against waste by urging everyone to give up commercially bottled beverages. The only thing missing from Homemade Soda is the ratio for using Sodastream Fountain Jet Soda Maker Starter Kit machines. I was able to figure out most of them, but it would have been a nice addition.

- E A Montgomery, Amazon.com

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