Recipe 20 - Pumpkin Pie Syrup for Soda and Everything Else

Another write-up for my longtime friends over at Everyday Art
I want to offer a special thank you to them for letting me be a part of their Pumpkinpalooza!



Let me just say that fall is a particularly favorite time of year for me.  October is a good month.  It's time for harvest celebrations, apple cider with glazed donuts, Halloween, and of course all things pumpkin.  Sometimes I wish that everything could taste like pumpkin pie.  Jones Soda did place doubts into my mind with their Pumpkin Pie soda in one of their holiday packs (really Jones, you could have tried harder).  At the first taste of their not so pumpkin pie soda, I knew there had to be a better way.  After many failures in years past to produce a suitable pumpkin pie soda, (it turns out a little pumpkin goes a long way) this is actually a tasty recipe that by far makes all those failures worth the effort.

You'll Need:
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2-3 Tbsp Pumpkin Puree (fresh or from the can)

1. In a small sauce pan, combine the 1 cup of the water and all four spices.
2. Cover and bring to a simmer for about 5 min.
3. Allow to cool, then strain through a fine mesh sieve or suitable strainer to remove the ground spice.  You should have plenty of good spice flavor infused into the water.
4. Top up your spice infused water to 1 cup (I used the remaining 1/4 cup) and combine in the saucepan (rinsed of all spice granules) with the sugar.
5. Heat to dissolve the sugar, this may take it to a simmer again.
6. Remove from heat and add pumpkin puree.
7. Allow to cool and add to soda, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, french toast, hot chocolate, cream cheese, egg nog, or whatever.

For soda:
To 2 Tbsp syrup, add 8-10 oz of Club Soda or to taste.  Carefully stir and enjoy.  With this recipe, there will be pulp from the pumpkin, so a finished soda doesn't bottle and store well.  I've tried to keep the particulates at a reasonable level by filtering out the spice.  You can leave the spice unfiltered if you wish for using this recipe in things like cream cheese, ice cream, pancakes, hot chocolate, egg nog or anything where you might expect spice to linger.  For a thinner body beverage like soda, it's best to leave the spice granules out, but keep the flavor in.

This is a great Soda Stream recipe because it lends itself well to smaller batches: the pulp settles out if it sits, and if your house is like mine, not everyone likes pumpkin pie flavor, particularly in a soda.  The syrup keeps for up to three weeks in the refrigerator, but it's good enough that it probably won't be around that long.