"DrPepper" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

A sausage ricotta arugula pizza will cure hump-day doldrums.

Poll: Who doesn't like cooking with animal fat? Bacon, anyone?

Iron Chef Michael Symon cooks breakfast at Williams-Sonoma to promote his new cookbook, co-authored by Michael Ruhlman.

Transform Thanksgiving leftovers -- odds are you still have some -- into a Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich.

Test your knowledge of Texas' beloved Dr Pepper.

Once the food coma of Thanksgiving passes, it's time to consider Christmas foods.

Stuff stockings with these essential food-inspired gift ideas.

I'm not a big fan of Dr. Pepper. It's way, way down on my list when it comes to beverages, right after carrot juice but right before Clamato. But I never thought about having it hot.

But apparently it's popular among some soda drinkers, or at least it was at one point, according to the ad on the right from the 1960s. How do you make Hot Dr. Pepper? Well, you put it in a pan and warm it up until it begins to steam. Then you pour it over slices of lemon. Hmmm...I'll have to try this, for science. I wonder if it works with Pepsi and Coke?

[via Boing Boing]

It's nearly a pity to find beverages that are sweetened with real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup -- I can't help but give them a try, and often I find I like them. High-fructose corn syrup -- cheap and readily available -- is what you'll find in all of the mass brands of soda, and it's hard to avoid in any pre-packaged beverage product. Diet versions, of course, will not have high-fructose corn syrup, but instead Nutrasweet or Splenda, both sweeteners with their own unique taste. But there's nothing quite like the taste of sugar, which provides such a pure note of sweetness to a drink. I'm not quite old enough to remember Coca-Cola before high fructose corn syrup became the norm, but I have located a peculiar offshoot of Dr. Pepper (a favorite of mine) known as Dublin Dr. Pepper. Sold in tiny 8 ounce glass bottles, this variety offers the "original formula" of the soda, and includes pure cane sugar. But I have to warn you -- if you like it, it may be hard to go back to the old standard.

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I know that it's been a while since our original post about its release, but I finally got to try a can of Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream. Actually, I have to admit that it was the diet version, and not the regular. No matter. The soda really exceeded my expectations. I thought that it would be overly sweet, perhaps a bit cough-syrupy, but the soda was perfectly sweetened and the berry flavor wasn't overwhelming. You can definitely tell that the flavor is raspberry, though, which was a nice change from all the vanilla/cherry vanilla/ black cherry vanilla sodas going around.

Overall? I thought it was great and I'm glad I opted for the 12-pack instead of a single bottle. It means that I don't have to go back out to the store so I can have another one.

Dr. Pepper has been planning to add other flavors of soda to its Soda Fountain line since the release of it's Diet and Regular Cherry Vanilla Dr. Peppers in 2004. This month marks the first release of its new flavor: Dr. Pepper Berries and Cream . The new flavors we wildly successful during test marketing and their rollout will continue through June, at which time they should be in stores nationally. Several packs of the new sodas are already for sale on eBay. The official launch started when the company released several  in Plano, Texas, where the headquarters of Cadbury Schweppes, the company behind Dr. Pepper, is located.

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