Cola Syrup recipe

A friend of mine is a 'Jamie at Home' representative (for Jamie Oliver products sold through parties at home) and so I've been to a few of these parties. Every party involves watching a dvd where Jamie goes through a 'recipe of the month' this month there were three drinks recipes - one of them for cola syrup!

So I decided it HAD to be made. I do like cola (or Pepsi really) and it looked like fun to make so I gave it a go. Here is the recipe:

Zest and juice of 10 oranges

Zest and juice of 8 lemons

2 sticks of cinnamon

4 or 5 cloves

3 or 4 bay leaves

1 level teaspoon of five spice

2 vanilla pods (I just used the concentrated extract that I bake with)

600g soft dark brown sugar

1.2 litres of water

Add it all to a pan, bring to the boil and then simmer for 1 hour 20 minutes – should reduce by ¾ and be quite thick. Then you just put it through a sieve and keep the liquid.

It should make about 1 litre of syrup. Then 25ml of syrup can be diluted with fizzy water to make an average glass size of cola!

So... the taste? Well, it's not the same as the branded stuff but it tastes good. It tastes fresher and you can taste some of the different elements that go into it. It make a decent amount of syrup and the syrup can be used for other things - baking cola cupcakes or glazing meat in the oven!