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I confess. I’d love to be that person—the one with the homemade soda sitting in neat, little rows in a small corner of a beautifully organized walk-in pantry. In this alternate reality, there would be multiple varieties—like raspberry, lemonade, a blend of citrus flavors, and others. (This would pair nicely with the batches of different kinds of homemade ice cream, ice cream treats, and popsicles stored in a big freezer.) I’m not quite there yet, so my solution to a frozen treat was a fruit soda float with as short a list of pronounceable ingredients as I could find. This was inspired in part because a summer stand-by is often root beer or cream soda floats (we like this brand for those—available at your local co-op or here), and fruit soda floats seemed a fun alternative to those!
What you’ll need:
- Fruit Soda (I used this brand of Peach, Cherry-Lime, and Grapefruit)
- Vanilla Ice Cream (I used this brand)
- Glasses (like these)
- Straws (like these)
- Fruit as a garnish (optional)
(Jury’s still out as to whether a standard scoop or a triggered scoop made the prettiest scoop of ice cream. It probably has a lot to do with ice cream softness as well.)
There’s not a lot of soda pop consumed in our home just for not wanting or needing the extra sugar and peculiar ingredients. For now, Izze gets a pass for being fairly uncomplicated (in spite of the citric acid, “natural flavor,” and anything with the word “gum” in it). Homemade ice cream does on occasion grace our freezer, but when we don’t have time or freezer space we get a container of ice cream with as few ingredients as possible. Ice cream should have cream, milk, sugar, eggs, and maybe some vanilla or real flavoring. (The laundry list of ingredients on most ice cream varieties reads more like a science experiment than a food, unfortunately.)
Bear in mind that this is merely a “good” alternative, not a “best” one. Ideally milk and cream would always come from grass-fed cows, sugar would be always be real sugar instead of something from a GMO sugar beet, and fruit should be kept from toxic pesticides, just to name a few.
What kind of float looks good to you?
