Orange Soda Syrup + Orange Liqueur

I had such a great bounty of oranges this year! (video below) Dozens of sweet navel oranges – I bought a cheap electric orange juicer to help make quick work of it. I zested and juiced and made orange liqueur and drank fresh orange juice and froze orange juice. I made a soda syrup mostly based on these 2 recipes, one of which uses straight OJ, sugar and zest, and the other from Hitch Hiking to Heaven which adds water and citric acid to this blend.

I now have 2 methods for zesting – I was using a vegetable peeler, and then scraping off any pith, then I switched to a microplane which really just grabs the orange peel and leaves the pith behind. This was evident when I first zested then juiced – the ones I used the microplane on were too slippery to hold!! I don’t have one of those fancy strip zesters. Maybe next year.

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Orange Soda Syrup

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Ingredients

• roughly 2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 cup of white granulated sugar
• the zest of SOME to a LOT of oranges*
• 1/2 t citric acid

Instructions

1

put it all in the pan and bring to a boil

2

boil for 7 - 15 minutes until it's reduced by a third or so

3

allow to cool

4

strain the zest and pulp from the mix into a glass jar and refrigerate

5

mix with carbonated water from a Drink Mate or Soda Stream or bottled carbonated water to your taste, over ice or neat

Notes

*I was getting about 5 oz of juice per orange, and so used about 4 oranges for juice/zest the first time. The second time, I grabbed a 2 cup container of frozen juice and put in the microplaned zest of 12 oranges after straining them from the vodka they had been flavoring for a week or so. The microplaned zest is a lot less volume since there's really no pith at all.
The citric acid is supposed to both add some tartness and also help preserve it in the fridge a little longer.
The remaining zest is the flavor of marmalade - I'm going to spread it on toast.

For the orange liqueur, I zested oranges and put in vodka – I’ve seen people say to soak it for days and days but really it seems to work in a week. I put the jar in a cabinet, pull it out daily and shake and put it back. Then strain the zest out and mix with a sugar syrup. Because it’s not clear how long it will last (the water/sugar syrup), I’ve been refrigerating it. This is the first time I used the zest from the liqueur in the soda syrup.

Last time I made soda syrup, I ended up eating the zest with a spoon – omg it is like candy. This time maybe I’ll spread it on a biscuit!