My new little hobby is making soda.  This is the very first of the sodas that I have made and it is one of my favorites.  I've made other kinds of soda, but they all follow the same general recipe.  After this I made blackberry soda, black cherry soda, some more orange soda and I even tried ginger ale (this one didn't really work out).  All of these different sodas start out with making a flavored simple syrup and then mix it with carbonated water.  I bought Cassie a SodaStream for some holiday because she likes seltzer, but you can easily buy a bottle of seltzer and just use that.

Ingredients

• Any flavoring: here are some examples of flavorings I used
• 3 medium oranges, juice and zest
• 1 cup of frozen blackberries
• 1 cup of black cherries
• 1 cup of sugar, I started to use sugar in the raw which is a natural cane sugar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 Liter carbonated water, created in SodaStream or a bottle of seltzer

Directions

1. Put flavorings, sugar and water in a pot and simmer for 30 mins, making sure all of the sugar has dissolved.  
1. If you are using whole berries or pieces of fruit, squish it down every once in a while using a potato masher, avocado masher or fork so all of the juices leave the fruit and incorporate into the syrup
2. Strain the syrup into a bowl and let cool.
3. Pour some of the carbonated water out of the liter bottle to create extra room
4. Pour the syrup into the bottle, close it up and rotate it to mix
1. You don't want to shake it because it will release all of the gas and then it will just be watered down fruit juice.
5. Start over with a new flavor, and let your imagination run wild. 
1. If you come up with any cool flavors let me know so I can try it :)