Hi! I’m Julie Hasson. Welcome to Everyday Dish. Today we’re going to make a homemade blackberry soda that’s really easy to make and it’s delicious, and your kids will love it. It taste like fresh berries, it’s so good. And it only takes a few ingredients to do.

So to begin with, we have a pot and in that pot, we’re going to add our sugar. And I know it seems like a lot of sugar but you’re only using a little bit in each soda. We’re going to add in our water and we have some thawed frozen berries. You don’t want those to splash up. There we go and then what we’re going to do, we’re just going to give it quick stir because you don’t want to stir it while it’s cooking and we’re going to bring it over to the stove, and we’re going to bring it to a boil. And then we’re going to simmer it for just a little bit. So I would say medium high heat until it comes to a boil and then we’re going to turn it down.

Now it’s just about to boil so what I’m going to do is I’m going to reduce the heat just slightly and you want to simmer it not boil it but simmer it so you want a little bit of bubbles for about five minutes or so. So we’re going to check it in five minutes. We just want it to be nice and slurpy. You don’t want to stir it and if you have any sugar crystals and stuff on the side, you could just take a pastry brush and just lightly brush down the sides of the pot. You really just want to avoid stirring it if you can. If you find that your fruit is sort of packing together in the center. You can take your spoon and just break it up a little bit like that. You just don’t want to stir it too much but that’s perfect.

Okay it’s been five minutes and we have this beautiful berry syrup. So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to set it aside and let cool for about 10 to 15 minutes and then we’re going to strain it, then we can make sodas.

Okay it’s been sitting and cooling down, now we’re going to strain it and really you want it, you want to cool it with until there’s no more steam coming out but I’m in a hurry so I’m going to do it a little sooner. Make sure your pitcher that you’re straining into is heatproof if your syrup is still a little hot because otherwise you will break the container. And then you want to give it a quick stir around. Put that right there and then we’re just going to pour it right into a strainer or a sieve.

Now we pressed all the juice out of the berries and this is what you wind up with this gorgeous berry colored syrup, very flavored too. And then what we want to do is we want to set is aside because we needed it chilled and once it’s at room temperature, you want to go ahead and you want to put it in your refrigerator, and you want it really cool because you don’t want it to melt you ice and stuff for your soda.

And now, we get to make the soda. So what we have is we have a glass with ice and now we get to make soda water. Now this is one of my favorite machines and you know what, I just got tired of drinking soda with high fructose corn syrup and all these artificial flavors and colors that are unnecessary. So we found this soda club machine which is great. You can carbonate your own water, you can flavor it anyway you want with juice or like the homemade syrups and it comes up to like 18 cents a bottle and I think with each canister, you get over a hundred bottles of soda water so it’s great. And there’s no waste if you’re worried about throwing away bottles or winding up in then landfill, you just keep reusing the same bottles so it works out really well.

And all you do is fill your bottle with cold water and I have cold filtered water and then you screw it on the machine, and then we get it carbonated. I like mine really bubbly so I’m going to do a couple extras so here we go. I can hear the bubbles. I can’t wait, I love really bubbly soda. But this is a perfect solution if you’ve been wanting to do something healthier it’s a great machine to have. And if you don’t have the machine, you could just use regular salts or water as well for the soda.

Okay now what we’re going to do is we’re going to add some blackberry syrup that I’ve already chilled this I made ahead of time and we’re going to add in a few spoonfuls. You can do this to taste so add as much or as little of the syrup as you want. I want this to be very blackberry and then we’re going to top it off. Look at that, with our carbonated water, these sodas are so good and you get pieces of fruit in them and they’re delicious. And again, it’s a healthy alternative to regular store bottled soda. Look at that, and if you have some fresh berries you can pop them in and float them around. It makes a beautiful garnish.

So for this recipe and many other fabulous recipes, please visit our website which is everydaydish.tv and if you’re interested in more information on the Soda Club Machine, you can visit the marketplace@everydaydish.tv. So thanks so much for joining me. I want you to go make some homemade soda now. It’s good. I’ll see you next time.