Holiday Gift Guide 2011 Torani Flavored Syrups Review

Since 1925, family-owned Torani has been crafting great tasting flavored syrups that coffeehouses and restaurants in over 40 countries use to make their flavored drinks taste so delicious. Coffeehouse and restaurant professionals choose Torani flavors because they are expertly crafted and made with the highest quality ingredients, like natural flavors and pure cane sugar. The sugar free flavors have no calories and are sweetened with Splenda. Now, Torani Flavored Syrups are widely available at retail so you can easily create authentic coffeehouse quality drinks at home.

You Can Flavor:

• Coffees/Espressos/Lattes/Mochas
• Hot Chocolates/Cocoas
• Steamed Milk
• Teas (Hot and Cold)
• Italian Sodas
• Lemonades
• Sodas
• Mocktails
• Energy drinks
• Smoothies
• Snow Cones/Shaved Ice/Italian Ice
• Torani Recipes

Torani Syrup Flavor Varieties: Torani flavored syrups are available in over 122 flavors, which include regular and sugar free varieties. Please go to www.Torani.com to see all flavors.

Where to Buy Torani Flavored Syrups:

• Cost Plus World Market
• BevMo
• Walmart
• Smart and Final
• Most major grocery stores
• Amazon.com (wide assortment of flavors)
• Torani.com and Shop.Torani.com (widest assortment of flavors)

At Amazon right now they are having specials on Torani Variety Packs for the holidays!

• Torani Variety Pack, Sugar Free Holiday, 25-Ounce (Pack of 6) List Price: $51.12 Price: $29.74
• Torani Variety Pack, Sugar Free, 25.4-Ounce Bottles (Pack of 6) List Price: $42.99 Price: $35.94
• Torani Variety Pack, Regular, 25.36-Ounce Bottles (Pack of 6) List Price: $42.99 Price: $35.94

I received two 750ml bottles of Torani Syrup, a recipe booklet, a special offer code to receive a discount on Torani.com, and 5 FREE coupons from SheSpeaks and Torani. The two bottles I received were the Hazelnut Syrup and the Sugar Free Pumpkin Pie Syrup to try out and review for free. These are both great for the holidays! I love them in hot chocolate and hot teas for this time of year because the drinks warm my belly. I am excited to try it with other recipes as well. The Torani Flavored Syrups all look like something you would see behind the counter of an expensive coffee shop, but they are priced reasonably too. I will definitely be trying more Torani flavors! The Hazelnut was my favorite flavored syrup that I have tried so far. I tried it with a mug of hot chocolate and later in a glass of eggnog and it was so delicious! It has a rich delicious flavor even without cream or milk that makes you feel like you are tasting some exotic treat. The Sugar Free Pumpkin Pie Syrup is really good when I am craving a pumpkin pie. It is calorie free because it uses Splenda and although I liked that fact I don't really care for the aftertaste of the Splenda in this flavor and I try to avoid artificial sweeteners. Otherwise it was very good and I would probably actually buy the regular Pumpkin Pie Syrup that they also have as a flavor choice once this one runs out.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: As a member of SheSpeaks I received two 750ml bottles of Torani Syrup, a recipe booklet, a special offer code to receive a discount on Torani.com, and 5 FREE coupons for free to sample and review for "Torani's Authentic Coffeehouse Flavor" Program. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review.

Homemade Syrups, Sodas and Other Fizzy Concoctions Blog Hop

Photo courtesy: the kitchn

I have been interested in the herbal community and herbs for natural healing and health for ages now. My favorite book on the subject, Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, is dogeared and worn as I have used it many times as a reference. I have many, many herbal friends on Facebook and Twitter. These are my kindred spirits, some with knowledge beyond my years and some just learning like I.

My herbal friend, Kiva Rose, is well known in the wildcrafting and herbal community. She is the Co-Editor at Plant Healer: A Journal of Traditional Western Herbalism, the director and organizer of the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference and the director and instructor of the Anima Lifeways & Herbal School.

So the other day Kiva posted on her Facebook wall that she loves lavender Italian soda with whipped cream. She had made this unique and wonderful sounding drink herself. She has a way of coming up with the most divine sounding recipes and commenting about them on Facebook making us all wish we were at her place for dinner. I love reading her posts on her Facebook wall and on her blog. She is a great inspiration for those of us who have her as a friend. When she posts it is hard not to comment :)

The comments were inspiring too, as one pointed out that the Sodastream that I have in my home and have reviewed here on my blog in the past could be used as the means to carbonate these delicious fizzy drinks. I had thought of making my own syrups, sodas and fizzy concoctions myself but never to the extent of using my Sodastream to carbonate them. Now I was hearing of yummy things like using rose syrup, cream from fresh goats milk, jasmine, elderberry, pomegranate, basil-mint, lemon balm, raspberry, elderflower, prickly pear, mulberry etc. to flavor fizzy water with! These natural sodas/syrups just are better for you and also tastier than their regular counterparts.

I have made my own awesome ginger ale before with the use of an already carbonated lemon/lime soda. I use my Hurricane Stainless Steel Manual Wheatgrass Juicer to juice the ginger root and squeeze out all the precious juice from it. Then we add as much of the ginger juice as we like to the lemon/lime soda and there you go...a yummy ginger ale how ever strong you like it. However, my version doesn't use my Sodastream and usually has high fructose corn syrup in it. I was looking on the web for something that might be better and came across this great post too about some homemade ginger syrup you could use with your Sodastream or carbonation machine.

Kiva's post also inspired me to create a blog hop to show a bit of our creative side. What is a blog hop? Well...A blog hop is a list of blogs or specific posts related to a similar topic. A blog “host” (that would be me) lists a Linky (list of links to other blogs or posts) on their page, along with the Blog Hop rules. There are 2 parts to a blog hop: 1) Each participant adds their info to the Linky so others can see it. 2) Each participant re-posts the Linky on their blog to promote the blog hop (not mandatory, but I hope you will do this part so others may also know about this).

Let's see how many recipes we can come up with for Homemade Syrups, Sodas and Other Fizzy Concoctions. I am intrigued by this concept and would love to connect with other blogs that want to participate in this too. Besides a recipe, pictures of your drink that you have created would be awesome! Add your link with the button below the rules.