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 I have to start with a word of caution. If you decide to make this Drink of the Week including it’s fiery presentation, proceed carefully. I have always been an advocate of responsible drinking and although that applies here too, there’s no reason to come this far only to let your hair catch on fire! That being said, there are alternatives if you don’t have the proper bowl or if you want to avoid the flames altogether. We’ll get to that, but first, let’s talk Tiki.
Over the years there have been several “bowl” style drink recipes that, for me, epitomize the laid-back attitude of tropical consumption. While I enjoy an outlandish ceramic Tiki mug filled with exotic juice and rum as much as the next beach bum, I also appreciate the idea that sometimes a drink is just so big (or so strong) that it needs to be
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 Muddling cherries and lime
This drink of the week is pretty easy to pull off. It’s a Caiprissima, which is like a Caipirinha only it uses rum instead of cachaça, and of course, this one also has cherries in it. According to my notes, I saw this somewhere back in June so it’s probably a summer drink. It’s been raining in December around here, so a summer drink sounds like a good drink in my book. This Caiprissima variation was created by Meaghan Dorman of Raines Law Room, Manhattan. If you are familiar with the Caipirinha, you know the drill—just use rum and throw in some cherries!
The process goes something like this: Take some pitted cherries and drop them into a shaker. Add your simple syrup (or just a couple spoons of sugar if you prefer) and muddle them into oblivion. Drop in half of a lime cut
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 Assorted Syrups
One of the best gifts you can give someone interested in cocktails is booze. You don’t even have to break the bank (although you might reconsider picking from the bottom shelf) because it doesn’t have to be the rarest or the most expensive item in the shop. Pick a decent base spirit and you really can’t go wrong. For example, there’s no such thing as having too much gin for classic cocktails, and who would turn away a nice bottle of whiskey or rum? Certainly not me, so if you want a no-brainer gift idea that will be used and appreciated, look no further. The problem with this approach is that a bottle of alcohol may not be the most personal or creative gift idea. It will work as a last resort, but you can do better!
If a bottle of booze is the baseline,
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 A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was asking me why she couldn’t find the recipe for Hot Buttered Rum on the site. I realized it’s because I had never posted it. It’s time to fix that!
There are a couple schools of thought when it comes to Hot Buttered Rum. One is that the best recipe is actually not for the cocktail at all but rather a batter that you use as the basis for the drink. It’s hard to deny that a good batter recipe probably makes a fantastic cocktail, but there is another approach that I find appealing for a different reason. It follows the idea that if a recipe is too hard or just too time consuming, you probably aren’t going to make it. I am not one to back away from a challenge, but I also recognize that not everyone wants to commit
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 Back in March I posted a recipe for the Sloe Gin Fizz. If you haven’t had the pleasure of tasting this drink, or more importantly, tasting real sloe gin, I highly recommend making a little room in your cabinet for this wonderful spirit. Do everything you can to find Plymouth Sloe Gin since other brands may not be the same product. Some people say that the best sloe gin is homemade, and that’s probably true. Just be aware that many of the bottom shelf brands have nothing in common with blackthorn berries, let alone actual gin. Plymouth, on the other hand, is made using the real fruit and their own gin, and it is absolutely delicious.
Besides the Fizz, there are several sloe gin cocktails worth trying, and one of them is the Millionaire #1. This drink appears in Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book. It’s also another great cocktail that
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 I have always wanted to make fresh cranberry juice, and you can find plenty of good recipes online that seem simple enough. Most of them describe putting cranberries through a blender or food processor, adding water, sometimes cooking them, sometimes letting the purée rest for some period, then straining the result. Then, it’s just a matter of adding sugar which helps bring that astringent flavor under control and counteracts the bitterness. The benefit is that you can add as little or as much sweetener as you like. The steps are straightforward enough, and I might try it some day, but for a single cocktail there had to be a shortcut.
The obvious solution is to simply muddle a handful of cranberries in your mixing glass and build the balance of flavor using other cocktail ingredients. That’s what Misty Kalfoken of Drink, Boston does in her Boston Bog. This cocktail
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 Last year, the New York Times ran an article featuring another fantastic cocktail by Bobby Heugel of Anvil, Houston. At the time, I didn’t really think much about it, but looking back, the simplicity and the seasonal significance right now make it a perfect feature for the Drink of the Week.
I am referring to the Apple Smash, a basic rum cocktail that makes great use of fresh apples both in the drink and for the garnish. With so many different apples available this time of year, why not give this easy recipe a try? After all, fresh apples are underused in cocktails and it’s nice to have a recipe that works without requiring a bunch of odd ingredients. In other words, you probably have everything you need to make this drink right now—just grab some apples and you are ready to go. Heugel suggests Honeycrisp, but it’s fun
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 Drink of the Week: Cuba Libre
I am just going to come right out and say it: This week’s DOTW is getting hijacked. Anyone who recognizes the Cuba Libre also knows that it’s just a fancy name for the popular Rum and Coke. Sure, there’s a squeeze of lime, and we’ll get to the drink itself.
Coca Leaf Tea
Most of you are probably thinking, “But isn’t the formula for Coke one of the most guarded secrets on earth?” Well, yes and no. Many aspects of the recipe are known (the ingredients are written right on the can), but there is some truth to the story that only a select few individuals know the formula of the primary flavoring component. However, some very convincing evidence exists that the Original Recipe—the one first created by Coca Cola inventor John Pemberton back in 1886—may have been revealed in a newspaper
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There’s more than one recipe for the Mojito. I even posted a different one a while back to accompany a fine article I wrote about simple syrup. It’s a refreshing summer drink and a great way to hide some rum inside a few mint leaves, lime and sugar. So, I figured it was about time I featured it as the Drink of the Week.
It’s not my favorite cocktail, but a lot of people love it, and why wouldn’t they? Rum, sugar, lime, mint—what’s not to love? I suppose you could consider the Mojito a cross between a Julep and a Daiquiri, but by that logic, every cocktail is just a combination of something else. I was going to get into some of the historic details about this Cuban classic, but I decided plenty has been written about that elsewhere. So, I thought I’d focus on the drink’s
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 I have always been a fan of incorporating fresh seasonal ingredients into cocktails whenever possible. Living in Minnesota, there’s nothing I can do about finding locally grown citrus, but I can use basil, mint, berries and plenty of other local produce—and not just for the garnish. Ideas can come from the farmers market or straight from my own garden. However, an often overlooked ingredient that offers a convenient alternative any time of the year is jelly or jam. Fruit preserves represent an opportunity to inject flavor and variety that you might not always consider. A perfect example of this appeared not long ago on the Small Screen Network with Jamie Boudreau using jam for a simple twist on a classic he called the Breakfast Collins.
The idea behind this is simple: you swap out the sweetener in a cocktail (in this case, we replace simple syrup in a Collins)
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