Kids love soda, but parents know it's full of corn syrup, artificial ingredients and empty calories. Here's a recipe to make fruit juice soda that's delicious, affordable and easy.
I invented this recipe when my daughters were little and we've been making it for parties and special occasions ever since.
Mix one cup seltzer water (ingredients should read carbonated water and nothing else) with 6-8 tablespoons of thawed juice concentrate (undiluted), to taste.
Be sure to use 100% juices and 100% juice mixes. We keep frozen juice concentrate in the freezer and mix up custom mixes. A current fave is mostly apple-raspberry with one spoonful of orange. It's great fun-- with no caffeine, sugar, corn syrup or additives.
Tips:
- Keep in mind that some juices are naturally sweeter than others. Juice mixes with apple juice tend to be sweeter and may appeal more to children. If you use a somewhat sour juice, you can also add a natural sweetener such as honey, agave syrup or a simple sugar syrup to sweeten it.
- To make a big batch, mix one can of concentrate with 3 cans full of seltzer water. You can decorate the glasses with cut fruit to make it even more special.
- You can find seltzer water in the soda section of any grocery store, such as Cub and HyVee in Mankato. You can also use an all-natural soda like 7-up as the base, but then you will have added sugar and other ingredients.
- Instead of buying fruit juice concentrate, you can also use your own. We canned fresh pressed grape juice after going grape picking last fall, which is naturally concentrated. The juice, jelly and soda from those grapes has been really out of this world!
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