Sparkle & Splash: Soda Fountain Favorites, Homemade Elixirs & Carbonated Cocktails Paperback – November 4, 2014

I love this book it give you simple beverage recipes to make thank turns ordinary into extraordinary/

This is a decent, hand-sized book with nice, full color photos that is perfect for browsing through to find some new drink recipes. There is a section with alcohol drinks, but even more recipes that are non-alcoholic. I am very anxious to try some out. The one I want to try first is the recipe to make cola syrup. When I grocery shop this week I am buying the ingredients for that. It was surprising to me what the ingredients were. I am really curious to see how it tastes, compared to Coke, Pepsi, or non-brand-name colas. It sounds delicious. And although it has sugar in it, the rest of the ingredients are healthy. Imagine drinking a refreshing cola without all those nasty chemicals in it? I want to try it first with sugar, but then experiment a few times with stevia, honey, or just reducing the amount of white sugar called for.Most recipes have very easy to find ingredients such as sugar, agave syrup (most grocery stores carry that now in the sugar aisle), herbs and spices, fruit and juices, etc. But there are a few recipes that have some tricky ingredients that at least I have never seen before. Such ingredients are gum Arabic (which luckily, is optional), dried bitter orange peel (are we suppose to make that or is that something you can actually buy?), coconut palm sugar, citric acid, coconut nectar, apricot nectar, and the like, are going to have me searching out grocery stores and I don't know, perhaps health food stores as well?But luckily those are not the types of ingredients in all the recipes. Many are very simple with things you can grab easily right at the grocery store. For example, to make grape syrup for grape sodas you just need Concord grape juice and a lemon. I want to try that one soon. It sounds refreshing, and I am guessing tastes better than canned grape soda with all the additives in it. Also for summer, I am looking forward to trying the strawberry syrup. All you need is water, sugar, and fresh strawberries. Making that into a strawberry soda sounds delicious, and even though it has some sugar (which we can always use a bit less in the recipes if we want, or can use stevia, which the author does mention), what a healthier alternative to canned sodas. There is a recipe for a cinnamon vanilla syrup which would make a very unique soda, but I am also thinking that might taste good in coffee or even hot cocoa as well. This book does get you thinking about all sorts of delicious ideas.One thing that had me a little confused when I read the description of this book is that it seemed to be aimed at people who own a Soda Stream. This is not the case at all. You can just buy seltzer water right in the grocery stores and make everything in this book. In fact, I thought the book would be specifically aimed at using my Soda Stream, which is why I wanted to check it out. I thought the recipes would show how much ingredients or syrup to make a liter bottle. But it just shows measurements to make one glass of a drink. And it doesn't even specify ounces. It might just say to pour into a "tall glass." This is where I wish there was more clarity. Or even mentioning how much syrup to use to make a whole liter bottle of the beverage. But I guess you just can experiment and figure out how much seltzer to use to fit your taste.This book does have a lot of delicious sounding drinks and I love recipe books with photos. It's a very nice quality book. I am sure I will be trying out at least a good 1/3 of the recipes in here, if not more. So I think it's really worth getting if you enjoy unique beverages, or would like trying to make some sodas without all the chemical additives. I really can't wait to try the cola one this weekend. Grape soda will be next....

Sparkles & Splash is such a great concept for a cookbook (of sorts.) Its value will depend on a few things, however. If you have a SodaStream or other soda maker at home, this book is incredibly handy to have around. If you don’t, you will need to keep your pantry stocked with plain seltzer in order for the book to have much merit. You could use the recipes for making non-carbonated drinks, but with some of the recipes, that really wouldn’t be the same.The RecipesWhat lies within Sparkles & Splash are a number of soda syrup recipes. There are recipes for cola, lemon-lime, grapefruit, lavender lemon, cucumber mint, ginger ale, orange, grape, and many, many other soda syrups. The selection is amazing and I quickly found myself craving certain ones, particularly the lavender lemon.Price ComparisonI’m not sure that the recipes for syrup are a great value. They definitely taste better and are handy because they save you a trip to the store, but they cost more. A bottle of SodaStream syrup is $6 in stores near me, and one bottle makes approximately 33 12-ounce servings.The recipe for Lemon-Lime soda syrup in Sparkles & Splash requires four limes, three lemons, and ¼ cup of coconut palm sugar. Lemons at my local grocery store are 69 cents each, or a pound bag for $3.99. A pound bag usually has four or five lemons in it. Limes are currently on sale for 39 cents each. Coconut palm sugar is hard to find, but if I drive 35 miles, there is a Trader Joe’s where I can buy it for $5.99 for a pound bag. Judging but the size of the bag, I’d guess there are about three, maybe four, cups in this bag. I’ll go for four for this estimate. That puts the price of a cup of coconut palm sugar at about $1.50. You only need ¼ cup, so the cost of the sugar is then approximately 37 cents.Adding the lemons, limes, and coconut palm sugar together, the cost of ingredients is around $4. That makes two cups of syrup. The recipe calls for a glass of seltzer to be mixed with three tablespoons of the syrup. One cup holds 16 tablespoons, so two cups would hold 32. You’re mixing three tablespoons into each glass, so one recipe therefore makes about 10 glasses of soda. SodaStream syrups become the more economical option.Benefit Beyond PriceDespite the glaring difference in overall cost, I think there is still incredible merit in Sparkle & Splash. I am pretty sure that you can switch up the sweeteners you use in many of these recipes. Instead of using coconut palm sugar, brown sugar, or regular sugar, many recipes could be made into low-calorie or zero-calorie formulas by swapping out the sugar for stevia or even monk fruit extract. Some of the recipes already use stevia or agave nectar. To me, that makes this recipe book invaluable.

So I thought making our own occasionally would be a great thing.The first drink I tried was the Ginger Ale and although I was aiming for something not too sweet, it was not sweet enough for my taste, even though it calls for 1 cup of palm sugar. Each recipe is a syrup and then you add that to another liquid to actually make your soda. I try not to eat a lot of sugar but even though, I will need to increase the amount of sugar. The Ginger Ale recipe uses palm sugar which is less sweet than sugar and helps to give the Ginger Ale’s it characteristic flavor.Each recipe then gives you how much of the syrup to use per glass but then doesn’t say how much of the carbonated liquid you need in relation to the syrup, so you will need to tweak that as well to suit your own tastes.This book gave me some ideas at least and I would recommend the book just for the ideas alone. I don’t drink cocktails so can’t comment on that aspect of the book.