Happy Hour at Home - Grasshopper

Chocolate mint has always been one of my favourite flavour combinations.  Recently I picked up some Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao to expand my cocktail options at home.  

A Grasshopper is an old-fashioned cocktail that I would probably never order in a bar.  When I was a kid and we'd go to a Chinese restaurant, they often had placemats with pictures of different cocktails.  The Grasshopper would be there, along with other amusingly-named drinks like the Pink Squirrel and Harvey Wallbanger.

But the Grasshopper is actually very tasty!  It makes a nice after-dinner drink, sweet and creamy like dessert.  Here's how you make one:

Ingredients

1 oz Creme de Menthe

1 oz Creme de Cacao

1 oz cream or milk

Directions

Add the ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake 30 seconds until chilled.  Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

Minty, green and creamy!  Enjoy!

Happy Hour: Daquiri

What do you think of when you hear the word daquiri?  Is it a sweet, pink, fruity, frozen drink in a bulbous hurricane glass? Or maybe in a plastic cup at an all-inclusive resort or in New Orleans?  A lot of folks think a frozen strawberry daquiri is the definition of a daquiri, but what if I told you a classic daquiri is actually a sweet and sour cocktail made with just rum, lime and simple syrup?  It’s not even frozen!

Daquiris are one of the original basic cocktails.  It originated in Cuba. It is so simple, but the ingredients work perfectly together. If you think you don’t like rum, try this recipe. The lime balances out any harshness in the rum so the cocktail just tastes refreshing.

All you need for this simple cocktail is rum, limes and simple syrup. Simple syrup is very easy to make by mixing equal parts sugar and hot water and stirring until the sugar dissolves.  Store any leftover syrup in the fridge for a week – it can go moldy if you keep it any longer.

Classic Daquiri

Ingredients:

2 oz white/light rum

1 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

½ oz simple syrup

Instructions:

Fill a shaker with ice and add the ingredients. Shake until chilled and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.

*Bonus recipe: The Hemingway Daquiri

Daquiris and Cuba are synonymous with Earnest Hemingway. The Hemingway Daquiri was invented in Cuba to honour Hemingway, who was reputed to prefer a drink with less sugar and more alcohol content. This is a very different cocktail than the classic daquiri, despite very small differences in ingredients.  A tiny bit of grapefruit juice and Maraschino liqueur replace the simple syrup, making a much more complex cocktail with a tinge of pink. (Marshino liqueur is not very sweet, it actually tastes of bitter almonds, but adds a brightness and complexity to the drink.)

Hemingway Daquiri

Ingredients:

1½ oz white rum

¾ oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

¼ oz fresh grapefruit juice

¼ oz maraschino liqueur (Luxardo)

Instructions:

Fill a shaker with ice and add the ingredients. Shake until chilled and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Cheers! Enjoy!

Happy Hour - The Last Word

I've been interested in The Last Word cocktail for quite a while. It was invented in Detroit during prohibition and seemed like something I'd really like. I had all the ingredients in my bar at home, except green chartreuse. At the time I just couldn't justify tracking down an expensive bottle for a single cocktail.

Then we visited Cliff Bell's in Detroit again, and I finally tried The Last Word. And I fell in love! It isn't as bitter as some of the cocktails I've tried recently, but it's herbal and a little sweet, and has a wonderful colour. 

When I received an LCBO gift card for my birthday, I knew I'd use it to buy green chartreuse.  And I finally had all the ingredients to make my new favourite cocktail.

Here's the super simple recipe:

3/4 oz gin
3/4 oz green chartreuse
3/4 oz maraschino liqueur
3/4 oz lime juice

Pour all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake until chilled.  Pour into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry, lime peel, or nothing at all. 

Since the recipe is equal amounts of each ingredient, it's easy to remember and easy to double or triple! 

Cheers!

Movie Cocktails - Wakandan Aviator

This post is by Matt, the Beer Baron. He loves to make cocktails based on superhero movies. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @geekcanuck

Special movies call for special cocktails. Just as we did for Wonder Woman with Themyscira Wonder Punch, now it is time for Black Panther with our newly created Wakandan Aviator -- although I made the process of putting it together more difficult due to my stubbornness.

How do you create a cocktail to celebrate Black Panther? For me, I immediately thought of creating a purple cocktail to acknowledge his regal status as King. The fact that the Black Panther premiere in Los Angeles was on a purple carpet and that the character’s suit glows purple in the movie sealed the deal.

A purple cocktail is easy, right? They are a dime a dozen if you Google them. Alas, that is where my stubbornness played its part. I didn’t want to use food colouring, digitally alter the photos or use Blue Curaçao (which I haven’t had since I was a teenager). That meant our starting point was a classic cocktail called an Aviation, which uses Creme de Violette to imbue a purple tint.  

We made a standard Aviation (2 oz gin, ½ oz lemon juice, ¼ oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur, ¼ oz Creme De Violette) first, using a recipe I found here. It was nicely aromatic but fairly weak and hardly worthy of a King.

Thankfully, we had help in the form of both an awesome book (Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail by Dave Arnold) and an awesome friend (who happens to certified cicerone and experienced mixologist). The variation above used ¼ oz more lemon juice balanced out by a ¼ oz more maraschino liqueur to bring the total to 2 oz gin, ¾ oz lemon juice, ½ oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur and ¼ oz Creme de Violette. We also swapped out the pretty neutral London dry gin we used in the first version for The Botanist, which is a more herbaceous and flowery gin.

Things were getting better. There was more body and complexity but we weren’t just there to make a good Aviation. To start creating our own variation worthy of the name Wakandan Aviator, we started with the Liquid Intelligence recipe, but this time added pineapple simple syrup and Ms. Better’s Pineapple Star Anise Bitters and used an egg white to soften the edges and give it a pleasingly smooth mouth feel. Alas, the end result was too sweet.

I tried a version with crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) for added vibrancy but then tried to balance out the added sweetness with even more lemon juice and the whole thing was a train wreck. (Not a train wreck I didn’t happily drink, but a train wreck nonetheless.)

This is when panic (and possibly drunkenness) started to set in. My go-to booze is bourbon but I was thankfully overruled before we went down that particular rabbit hole. Instead, we ditched the entire concept of the Aviation and decided to try muddling blueberries to make a purple Gin Fizz. As you can see above, it was certainly pretty and verging on purple, but not something any of us would seek out, let alone serve to a King.

In the end, the Gin Fizz did give us an element we all liked in the muddled blueberries. Now, we just needed to combine it with the other things we liked best from our previous attempts to come up with our Wakandan Aviator, which turned out alluringly aromatic, nicely balanced between sweet and sour, pleasingly smooth, and more-or-less purple:

2 ounces gin (in this case, The Botanist)
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
½ ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur
¼ ounce Creme De Violette
Handful of muddled blueberries
1 egg white

Shaken over ice
Poured into a martini glass and garnished with a frozen red star

Why garnished with a frozen red star (made with cranberry and pineapple juice), you ask? Well, that is because I am a super geek. At the end of Captain America: Civil War, Bucky (aka The Winter Soldier) is taken to Wakanda and placed into cryostasis until Wakandan scientists can figure out how to reverse his brainwashing. The frozen red star represents Bucky and how technologically advanced Wakanda is. Duh.

So, what did we learn through the process of making our Wakandan Aviator?

• Use good gin
• Egg whites in cocktails (as in bourbon sours) are wonderful
• It’s always good to have friends that kick ass
• Never set out to make a vibrant purple cocktail unless you are willing to be vaguely disappointed in the colour or just break down and cheat
• Buy lots of lemons

Obviously, many lemons were hurt in the making of this cocktail.

Cheers and have fun at Black Panther. Wakanda Forever!

Happy Hour: Themyscira Wonder Punch

This post comes from Matt, the Beer Baron, who likes craft beer and creating superhero-themed cocktails.  Follow him on Twitter or Instagram @geekcanuck

Even before we went to see Wonder Woman, I was toying with the idea of coming up with a cocktail to celebrate her big screen solo debut (and director Patty Jenkins becoming the first woman to direct a superhero blockbuster). I’d had some fun ideas about rimming the glass with sugar to represent a tiara and using lemon curls as the Golden Lasso of Truth but I hadn’t quite cracked the concept for the actual cocktail -- until a quick trip to Toronto before the movie.

The Clockwatching Tart and I were meeting an old friend for lunch and enjoyed some truly fantastic D.O.P. (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) pizza, whose ingredients all come from specific regions of Italy. While the food and service at Pizzeria Libretto were wonderful, my eureka moment came when I spotted Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers Cherry Gin in a cocktail on the menu.

I’d been toying with the idea of starting off with a base similar to an Aperol Spritz, which is something the Clockwatching Tart had recently tried and enjoyed. An Aperol Spritz combines brut (dry) prosecco with bitter-sweet Aperol and club soda. To even come close to doing Wonder Woman justice, I decided to do away with the club soda entirely and add in the Dillon’s Cherry Gin.

                                           

Between my original garnish ideas, the addition of blueberries to match the colour scheme of her outfit, and the Dillon’s Cherry Gin to make the whole thing fittingly stronger and more powerful, the ingredients are as follows:

• 4 ounces dry sparkling wine
• 3/4 ounce Aperol or Luxardo Aperitivo
• 3/4 ounce Dillon’s Cherry Gin
• Yellow sanding sugar
• Lemon curl
• Blueberries

We used Canadian brut from Nova Scotia but any dry sparkling wine would do.

Add the Aperol or Aperitivo and gin and give it a good stir.

Garnish to bring out the Wonder Woman in your drink and then enjoy! We felt the Themyscira Wonder Punch turned out wonderfully well. It was herbaceous, lightly floral and not overly sweet, while also being alluring, balanced, approachable and strong but not overbearing, all of which seemed fitting for Wonder Woman.

As for the movie, [spoiler alert] it was awesome and unabashedly positive and inspiring. It was one of my favourite theatrical experiences of the year and I loved that there were women dressed up as Wonder Woman there and that the movie seemed to live up to their expectations. Go enjoy the movie and then follow it up with a Themyscira Wonder Punch!

Happy Hour - Homemade Gin Smash

Last year a terrific new pre-made cocktail hit the shelves of the LCBO, Georgian Bay Gin Smash.  We tried it at a food & wine show and fell in love with the fruity but not-too-sweet flavour.  We weren't the only ones.  It was extremely popular in Ontario and very hard to find for a lot of the summer.  At one point we came across a full case of 24 at the LCBO and grabbed it to stock up.  

But when it wasn't available, and we were craving the flavour, I decided I could make my own Gin Smash.  I used Bulldog gin, but it would be even more authentic with Georgian Bay gin. 

All you need is gin, club soda, limes, lemons, tangerines and mint. 

Muddle the mint and fruit with a shot of gin. Muddling just means to crush the fruit and herbs together to get their juice and essence into the gin.  The peels add a lot of flavour as well.  If you don't have a muddler, use a wooden spoon.  

I made the smash two ways.  One was muddled in a cocktail shaker and strained, the other was muddled directly in the glass so all the fruit remained in the cocktail when served.  Both were topped with club soda.

I think I liked the strained version slightly better, for ease of sipping, but both were delicious! 

You can be creative and add different fruits and herbs to make your own smash.  I am heading to Georgian Bay for a girls weekend soon, and I'll be bringing both the pre-made Gin Smash, and ingredients to make my own. 

Cheers! 

Happy Hour - Cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan is a classic cocktail that happened to become very popular in the 90s.  I think it's time for a comeback!

Don't worry, it's not too sweet.  It's actually a vodka sour, quite boozy, with an awesome pink hue from the small amount of cranberry juice. 

It's super refreshing and easy to make so I highly recommend mixing some up for your next party or night in.  

Here's what you need:

1 1/2 oz vodka (or citrus vodka if you have it)
1/2 oz triple sec (or Cointreau or Grand Marnier)
1/2 oz cranberry juice
1/4 oz fresh lime juice
lime twist for garnish

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, mix all ingredients and shake until cold. 
Pour into a martini glass and garnish with a twist of lime peel.

If you double the recipe you can make two at once, or make a whole bunch in advance for a party!  Cheers!  

Happy Hour - Hot Toddy

Is this a cocktail or is it medicine?  Many cocktails were created to be medicinal and a Hot Toddy is often said to "cure" a cold or flu.  Speaking from personal experience I can say it does relieve cold symptoms!  

The heat of the drink can clear sinuses and, along with the honey, ease a sore throat.  The lemon is good for vitamin C, and the bourbon just makes you feel better in general before helping you get to sleep.

This drink couldn't be easier, so even someone weak from a cold can handle the recipe. 

Simply stir bourbon, lemon juice and honey with hot water until the honey melts, and drink while relaxing. 

Hot toddies are sometimes made with other whiskey, rum or even brandy. You can use whichever you  prefer or have on hand. Personally, I love the sweetness of bourbon in this drink. 

Here's my recipe but feel free to adjust to your own taste:

2 oz bourbon
1 tablespoon honey
1 oz lemon juice
1/2  cup hot water (just below boiling)

Stir together all ingredients in a large mug until the honey is melted.  Top with a slice of lemon if desired. 

Happy Hour Two for One: Negroni & Boulevardier

I'm fascinated by the world of cocktails, both classic and all the new craft cocktails being created in bars popping up all over. 

You can't read much about cocktails without coming across the Negroni, a beloved, bitter Italian aperitif. 

The first time I tasted a Negroni I was astonished that anyone would choose to drink something so bitter. I'd describe it as bracingly bitter. But, strangely, the Negroni grows on you.  And so I bought a beautiful bottle of Campari so I could have Negronis any time. 

But once you have a bottle of Campari you have to find other things to do with it. You can make a simple Campari and soda, or you can break out the bourbon and make a Boulevardier.

I prefer to buy the liquor with the most whimsical cap. 

Both the Negroni and the Boulevardier share the same basic recipe, but one is made with gin and the other with bourbon.  As you might imagine, the Boulevardier tastes sweeter and richer, while the Negroni is more crisp and sharp.  

I garnished my Negroni with the traditional orange peel but added a cherry to the Boulevardier to complement the bourbon. 

I have to admit a slight preference for the Boulevardier. The sweet depth of the bourbon offsets the bitterness of the Campari in a way I enjoy.  But in the heat of summer it's nice to have a classic Negroni for a refreshing change of pace. 

Here are the recipes, cheers!

The Negroni

1 1/2 oz London Dry Gin
3/4 oz Campari
3/4 oz Red (sweet) vermouth

Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice.  Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of orange peel. 

The Boulevardier

1 1/2 oz Bourbon
3/4 oz Campari
3/4 oz Red (sweet) vermouth

Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice.  Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry or twist of orange peel. 

Happy Hour: Lavender Lady

I've been experimenting with gin cocktails lately. Gin is so refreshing as it gets warmer outside. 

I didn't used to be a fan of gin. Although my first-ever cocktail was a Singapore Sling (when I was not quite legal age), I found gin to be a little harsh when I was younger. I particularly disliked the combination of gin and tonic, which tasted like pine trees to me.  
It's amazing how our tastebuds change as we age.  Now I will seek out a refreshing gin or complex bourbon cocktail on a menu instead of something safe and sweet.

This cocktail is based on the "Lady" cocktails popular after prohibition.  A Pink Lady is gin, grenadine and eggwhite.  A White Lady is gin, Cointreau and lemon juice. I love the White Lady, so I thought I'd try to make a Lavender Lady with lavender from my garden. 

I made a lavender simple syrup by mixing a cup of sugar with a cup of water and steeping 5 sprigs of fresh lavender in the syrup as it heats.  I left the lavender in the syrup to strain as it cooled, for about an hour, creating a subtle, floral syrup.

Mix 2 ounces gin, 1 ounce lavender syrup and 1 ounce fresh lemon juice in a cocktail mixer half filled with ice.  Shake until the mixer is cold and frosty on the outside, about 30 seconds.

Pour the drink into a cocktail glass and garnish with a sprig of lavender.  It's not a purple drink, but it is light, floral, refreshing, and very lady-like.

Enjoy!