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Recipe for an old-fashioned egg cream or “fizzy iced chocolate”, the perfect cold beverage on a hot summer day. Made with fruit-sweetened chocolate syrup for a naturally low-carb treat.
So there I was, standing in line at the grocery store.
Ho-hum.
The elderly gentleman in front of me was obviously bored with the long line too. After a few minutes, he turned around and began to eye my shopping cart.
There wasn’t much to see as I don’t buy a whole lot at the grocery store. There was a bag of organic Fuji apples, sparkling water, and several bags of Epsom salts.
Yes, just about one of the most boring shopping carts you’ve ever laid eyes on.
This gentleman fixes his gaze on the sparkling water bottles and starts telling me a story about when he was a child in Queens, New York, and this yummy drink he and his brothers made out of club soda.
Curious, I asked him what kind of a drink he made.
What is Fizzy Iced Chocolate?
With a twinkle in his eye, he told me that they mixed club soda, milk, and chocolate syrup and that it tasted so great on a hot summer day. He went on to describe how quality food was hard to come by, and this drink made the milk stretch a bit further during the Depression.
Even more curious as this beverage did not sound particularly yummy to me, I asked how much club soda and milk were used.
He said the drink was mostly club soda with just a bit of milk and chocolate syrup.
He assured me that my kids would love it and that I should try it.
Later that day, I made some exactly as described and gave some to my boys to try. They loved it and agreed it was very refreshing in the summer heat.
We decided to name it fizzy iced chocolate. In other areas of the country, it is apparently known simply as “egg cream”.
I recommend using homemade fruit-sweetened chocolate syrup for this recipe. If you decide to buy, it is best to choose organic. This avoids the GMO white beet sugar in conventional brands (labeled as “sugar”).
This is a fun choice to make if you are out of homemade kombucha tea or other types of cultured beverages and want something bubbly and flavorful to enjoy.
Traditional Egg Cream Recipe (with nondairy option)
This recipe for an old-fashined egg cream, or fizzy iced chocolate, is the perfect refresher in hot weather.
Ingredients
- 6 ounces (177 ml) sparkling spring water or plain seltzer
- 2 ounces (59 ml) whole milk
- 1 tsp chocolate syrup
Instructions
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Mix all ingredients together in a large glass.
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Stir and serve very cold. Add ice if desired.
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Refrigerate leftovers (if there are any!).
Recipe Notes
Substitute store bought or homemade coconut milk for dairy milk for a nondairy egg cream if desired.
The real name for this drink is an “egg cream” even though there’s no egg in it. And they are yummy!
Egg cream?! Wow, I never would have thought that! Thank you for solving that mystery 🙂
Isn’t that so funny?? No egg in an “egg cream”! We just moved to New England and had started seeing these egg cream sodas on menus around town, especially near the beach. I wondered what the heck that was but Matt (from PA) knew and said he’d seen them at the Jersey shore when they used to vacation there. It’s definitely a NY thing…and where NYers vacation! 🙂 We haven’t tried them because they are typically made with icky ingredients, but I never thought of trying it at home…thanks!! And, I love talking to people at the store- people usually remark on my cart and ask questions, and I find it’s a good way to get a convo going about healthy real food eating. I always talk to the cashiers about grassfed meats and butter and tell them it’s a shame they don’t carry raw milk at the stores. 🙂 (Well, SOME stores do actually- one local grocery chain, the natural foods stores and then if we go into Maine we can find it many, many places!)
That is so amazing I have never seen them having gone to grad school in Philly and spending the summer weekends between my 2 years there at the Jersey shore (with cousins of my Sister in Law) all the time. Food was not important to me at that point in my life though. I basically lived on scrambled eggs as that was all I could afford to eat (sometimes I lived on $10 from Sunday to Friday when i got paid for my 20 hour a week internship). I guess eggs weren’t such a bad thing .. I couldn’t even afford fast food !!!
You can find “livestock” raw milk sold at farms all over NH and Maine. I live in Maine and buy my “livestock” raw milk just over the border in NH. I’ll be breeding my Oberhasli in the fall, so I’ll have my own supply in the spring. 🙂 I can’t wait.
Yes, I used to drink them in soda shops as a child in Brooklyn!
Yes, Egg Cream Soda!” On my first trip to The Big Apple I had to have one, a Black and White Cookie too, and I watched it made. They didn’t use milk though, but real cream, or maybe half and half? It was very cold and hit the spot on a hot August day in NYC. The key I was told to make it authentic is a special soda in one of the soda bar type seltzer bottles, you know, metal with a spritzer or squirt top? Anyway, thanks for reminding me of Egg Cream Sodas; might try one but using the good ingredients Sarah used. Cheers!
Yes, in New york – you can still get the old fashioned egg cream – some of the fancier places though charge a ton.
Can you write down how to make the Egg Cream Soda?
Yes, indeed, egg cream and anyone from New York would have recognized your description immediately, LOL! We are in South Florida and there are a few places here that still make them, but they are easy to make at home. Yummy!
Sounds worth a try! Sometimes I wonder what the cashiers think when I check out… I buy a lot of butter, sour cream, some produce, lunch meat, larabars, tortilla chips, and sprouted bread. And I hardly ever have any coupons! After being so used to the couponing craze, they always ask, “any coupons?” and I just have to say, “Not for this stuff…” (I guess real food isn’t a big rebate/coupon/money-maker for the stores, huh?)
Egg creams were still popular when I grew up in NYC in the 70s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_cream
I LOVE looking in other people’s shopping carts at the checkout! Fun post 🙂 And thanks for fixing it so we can right-click on links!
I was going to say…that’s an egg cream! Love them, but totally forgot about them until now. Thanks for the reminder!
Hey sarah, buying seltzer water by the bottle is pretty expensive here when we have filtered water through a reverse osmosis system at home, would you suggest purchasing a sodastream to make our seltzer at home or is this a different thing? Maybe its called something different here in aus 🙂 sounds like you use seltzer often tho!
This post made me smile! A lot of older folks here still remember the unpasteurised milk in the 50’s where it would be delivered at your door with a bucket and they all talk of that yellow cream floating on the top. Living in dairy-Holland it’s the same story almost every time: How those were the times… 😉
Years and years ago I accidentally poured 7-Up into a cup that had a little milk at the bottom. Since I was a guest, I felt like I should just drink it and not say anything. To my surprise, I loved it. Who would think that a bit of milk in watery fizz would be delicious?? Thanks for the reminder–seltzer water is on the grocery list!
Yum!
My parents called it an “Egg Cream”. They were raised in Brooklyn during the Depression/WW2 years. And–sorry!–they had no idea why it was called an egg cream when it had no eggs. 🙂 I grew up drinking these.