7:22
Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with three new dirty sodas inspired by three old classic desserts. That's right, we're turning strawberry shortcake, coconut cream pie, and blueberry crisp into dirty sodas. And for my first foray into this very trendy refreshment, I was extremely happy with the results and very excited to share them with you. And to get started, we'll do our first simple serve for the coconut cream pie version, which starts by toasting some unsweetened coconut flakes over medium heat. And what we're shooting for here is about one/ird of the flakes to be a nice dark golden brown. And then 2/3 of them to be a lighter golden brown to almost not golden brown. And once they're looking
something like this, we'll go ahead and transfer in our water along with an equal amount of white sugar. And we'll go ahead and give that a stir and wait for it to start to simmer. And once it does, we can back our heat down a little bit to maintain a gentle simmer. And we'll let that cook for about 20 to 25 minutes. At which point, our coconut syrup is probably going to look something like this. And then what we'll do is let that cool on the stove about 15 minutes before we strain it. Since if you splash yourself with it, then it will be significantly less painful than if you splash it on you now. But either way, we'll go ahead and strain that and we'll press out as much syrup as we can.
And then once that's accomplished, to finish off the flavoring, I think we'll do one teaspoon of coconut extract just to intensify that flavor a little bit. And then we'll finish up with a very small but very, very important pinch of salt. Since again, we're not just making a coconut flavored soda, but rather we want this to taste like coconut cream pie. And by toasting the coconut and adding that little bit of extract plus this pinch of salt, believe it or not, that's exactly what it's going to taste like. And that's it. We'll simply let that cool, transfer it into a smaller container, and pop it in the fridge until we need it. And we will move on to our strawberry shortcake syrup, which
begins by tossing some trimmed fresh quartered strawberries and a very generous amount of sugar. And once we've given that a quick mix, we're going to let this sit on the counter for an hour. And that sugar is going to pull a whole bunch of moisture out of the strawberries and I think make them taste even more delicious. So, I covered that up and let it sit out for 60 minutes. at which point your strawberries are probably going to look something like this, which could not be more beautiful. And if at this point you just decide to go ahead and make strawberry shortcake, no one would blame you. But if we're doing the soda version, what we'll do is transfer some water into the bowl, which is going to help loosen things up and
make things easier to transfer into a saucepan. And then what we'll do is add the rest of the sugar. And we'll give it a stir and head to the stove where we will bring this up to a simmer on mediumigh heat. And then we'll back our heat down a bit to maintain a nice gentle but steady simmer. And we'll let this cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. And about halfway through if you want, we can give this a little mashing just to smash that fruit up a little bit and maybe extract a little more flavor. So that's what I did. And after simmering for about 20 minutes, things look like this. And that's it. Once again, we'll let this cool down a bit before we pass it through a strainer. And this time we
have two options. You can set the strainer up on something taller like a soup pot and not press it and just let all the strawberry syrup drain through. Or the method I'm using, you can actually push some of the fruit through with a spoon and squeeze all the syrup out this way, which is going to give us something a little thicker, probably something closer to a strawberry sauce. But for my strawberry shortcake soda, I thought that would work the best. And then to flavor this like a shortcake, we will add a big spoon of vanilla extract, plus a little bit of butter extract, which you can buy, but I actually made my own with some butter and vodka, and it worked out pretty well. And I'll try
to add those instructions to the written recipe for the three of you that will try that. And then we'll finish up with some almond extract. And we'll go ahead and give that a mix. And as I've told you before, whenever you're stirring something, always try to remember what you might have forgot. And for me in this case, it was the pinch of salt, which again I think is key. So I added that. And my strawberry shortcake soda syrup was done. And I moved on to the third version, which is blueberry crisp, which starts by toasting a couple tablespoons of rolled oats over medium heat, which you can do by stirring, but it's going to be a lot easier if you flip them in the pan. And we'll do that
for a couple minutes until they're nice and golden brown, but not too dark. Because at this point, we want to toss in some chopped walnuts. And we want to toast those for about 30 seconds as well. And once that's been accomplished, we'll go ahead and pour in our blueberry juice as well as our white sugar. And then besides that, I'm also going to add a couple cups of fresh blueberries, followed by a little bit of cinnamon. And I used about a third of a cinnamon stick since we don't want that too strong. But the cinnamon along with those toasted oats and walnuts really did produce a fairly close blueberry crisp flavor. And that's it. Once again, we'll bring this to a simmer and then
adjust our heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or so, at which point it look like this. And we will move on to the cooling and straining step. And because of the oatmeal, this one was definitely the thickest syrup. And once this one cools down and comes out of the fridge, it's going to thicken up even more. So, make sure you give it a good stir before you use it. And if you want to thin it with a little bit of blueberry juice, go ahead. And then to flavor this one, I added some of the butter extract along with the mandatory pinch of salt. Plus, I also did a small squeeze of gel style blue food coloring, which is not going to make this look blue, but it will give it a color closer
to actual blueberries, as you can kind of see as it splashes up on the sides of the bowl. And that's it. Once all our syrups are done and chilled, we can grab some glasses with ice. And I'm going to start all three of these versions with some cream soda, which is basically my secret ingredient. And I'm putting like twice as much in that middle glass since that's going to be the coconut cream pie version. And the only other soda that one's going to get is some regular sparkling water. And then for the strawberry shortcake version, I'm going to fill it up with a strawberry flavored sparkling water. And because of the old fizzing up effect, we'll probably have to do this in a few additions. But
anyway, like I said, I finished off my coconut cream pie version with just some regular plain sparkling water. And then for my blueberry crisp, I found a summer berry sparkling water, which was blackberry, raspberry, and blueberry, and it worked out very nicely. And as you top these off, keep in mind, we still need to leave a little bit of room to add our syrups. So, for obvious reasons, don't go all the way to the top. Now, I'm going to pour in about three tablespoons or so, but of course, the exact amount's going to be up to you. I mean, you are after all the Nicole tanner of the plant here. So, add some and give it a taste. And you can always add more. And then I'm not sure
if you have to, but before we add the splash of half and half to the top, I'm going to take a bar spoon and give each one of these a little bit of a mix just to blend those syrups and sodas before we cream the tops. And I'm going to be doing a splash of half and half, which seems to be pretty standard procedure here. Although I guess some people use coffee creamer, which personally I avoid at all costs. And you could, if you want, use cream instead. But I'm going with a combo of half and half splashed in and then a nice pipe in whipped cream over the top, which is not just going to make these sodas a little richer. It's going to make for the perfect platform for our garnishes. And for those, I'm going to use some
crispy freeze-dried strawberries. And of course, some toasted coconut flakes. And then to simulate a blueberry crisp topping, I'm actually going to do a sprinkling of grape nuts, which yes, is in some of our crisp topping recipes. But anyway, once I had those looking exactly how I wanted, I stuck in three straws and then took way too many pictures before I finally went in for the official taste test. And that, my friends, believe it or not, really did sort of taste like a liqufied strawberry shortcake with carbonation, of course. All right, this would have been great with just a regular strawberry syrup, but those other things we added in really did work out perfectly. And as
good as the strawberry shortcake dirty soda was, I enjoyed the coconut cream version even more. And it was just like drinking the pie. So that one was my favorite. And then I moved along to the blueberry crisp version, which ended up being Michelle's favorite. And again, those other little elements we added to the syrup really did make this reminiscent of the dessert it was based on. And by the way, I don't have a big sweet tooth and I never drink soda, so I really wasn't sure I was a dirty soda kind of guy. But apparently I am as long as they're based on classic oldfashioned desserts. And whether you've been drinking dirty sodas for a while now or these are as new to you as they are to
me. I thought these were very delicious and I really do hope you give them a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And is always in joy.
