Homemade Blackberry Lime Soda

I rarely drink soda. Aside form all those strange, difficult to pronounce, scary sounding ingredients and all the sugars (and don't even get me started on the disgusting taste of diet soda), I just don't like the fizzy bubbles. They bother my tummy and make me feel ill. That's one of the reasons I don't drink beer.

I will, however, enjoy a splash of fizzy club soda in a bourbon cocktail or a homemade soda, like this Homemade Blackberry Lime Soda. It was in the 50 Homemade Sodas booklet in the most recent Food Network Magazine. Basically, you make a simple syrup and add club soda or seltzer. We make a lot of simple syrups for iced teas and cocktails. They're easy to make.

This one uses a lot of blackberries (1 pint) and 1 cup water with 3/4 cup sugar plus the juice of a lime. We made it in the evening and refrigerated it overnight. For each drink, we put 2 tbsp of syrup and 2 of our huge ice cubes into a collins/highball glass (just to be a little fancy, we used the "good" glasses) and then added club soda. The drink is such a pretty color.

Ours was a thick syrup. We couldn't squeeze it out the nozzle of our usual simple syrup squeeze bottle. It also didn't thoroughly mix into the soda right away. It took a while to completely dissolve. Before the syrup completely mixed in, there was not a lot of flavor, but after it dissolved, there was a delicious blackberry and lime flavor. I used a spoon-straw so I could stir before each sip.

We got 4 drinks from one batch of syrup.

It was very tasty and refreshing. I'm looking forward to trying some other syrups from the booklet. I already have the next flavor picked out.