Yummy Sparkling Lemonade Recipe

By Vicky Nardone

Our friend Bill got a Soda stream from his girlfriend Amanda for Christmas.  If you're not familiar with what the Soda Stream is, you can use it to make your own pop.  It carbonates the water for you and then you buy flavored syrups to pour in to the carbonated water.  You can check them out here.  We were in this cool cooking store in the Galleria Mall called "Le Gourmet Chef" and we saw them and Matt decided he wanted to try one out to see what it was like.  We ended up having Bill and Amanda over for dinner and they brought the soda stream and a bunch of different flavors for us to try.

Well Matt was hooked.  Luckily his birthday was a week or so later so my mom and I ended up buying him one for his birthday.  We go through quite a bit of pop in our house on a weekly basis so I knew he would use it.  Also, instead of high fructose corn syrup, the Naturals variety of soda stream flavors use real sugar so that is a bit of a benefit too.

Since we got it, I've been trying to think of other things to make with it.  Matt and I love to host barbeques at our house during the summer on our back porch and one of everyone's favorite drinks at the barbeque that I introduced when we first started having them was lemonade.  I have to say that I make a pretty mean lemonade recipe.  Not that making lemonade is complicated, but still - it takes a little bit of effort.  So my idea was to try and use the soda stream to make a sparkling lemonade.  My favorite version of sparkling lemonade comes from Jack Astors.  This sparkling lemonade recipe turned out just like it!





What you'll need:

• Soda stream and 1 liter bottle or if you don't have a soda stream you can probably use a 1 liter bottle of tonic water instead
• 3 lemons (although I probably ended up only needing juice from 2)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water

Instructions:

1. Cut the lemons up and squeeze them into a container that you can pour into the soda stream bottle from.  I used my easy peasy lemon squeezy lemon squeezer for this step.  Set lemon juice aside.
2. Poor the 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water into a pan on the stove.  Cook on medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved into the water.  This step is important to prevent your lemonade from being grainy.
3. Carbonate the water in your 1 liter bottle with the soda stream.  We always use 7 pumps for a 1 liter bottle.
4. Pour a little bit of the carbonated water out.  Use your judgment to leave enough room to pour the lemon juice and sugar water in.
5. Pour the lemon juice and the sugar into the soda stream bottle.  I'd recommend pouring slowly so it doesn't overflow.
6. Refrigerate and Enjoy!

It's that simple!  If anyone has any other non-traditional type drinks or uses for the soda stream, I'd love to hear about them in the comments section.