Category: Drink

I recently needed to develop a recipe for a cocktail based on the theme of a magical fruit bat, as one does, because — well, because of reasons.

Purple Fruit Bat

• ½ ounce + 1 ounce chili-lime rum
• ¼ cup (4 Tablespoons) dried, sweetened blueberries — the type you might put in some sort of fancy trail mix or something
• ¾ ounce Aperol
• ¾ ounce peach-flavored whiskey — Crown Royal makes a good one
• 1 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice

You will also need some special equipment for this. Well, not need need, but you’ll be able to use a couple of these items that you don’t get to break out very often, and you’ll feel vindicated for buying them in the first place:

A muddler — This is a special stick for grinding ingredients up in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Sure, you could use a wooden spoon for this, or even an actual stick, but I like breaking out the pestle — the stick part — of my largest mortar and pestle.

A bar spoon — one of the ones with a long, twisty handle. Again, you could just use your largest cereal spoon or the wooden spoon mentioned above, but if you’ve got a cool actual bar spoon, it would be a shame not to use it. I have one that’s black and twisty and has a skull on the end of it.

A strainer — This could be an actual fine-mesh strainer that you use for pasta or something. There are any number of bar strainers, often called julep strainers or something similar. I use a $2 sink strainer from the dish-soap aisle in my supermarket. It does a really good job and has almost exactly the same diameter as a martini glass.

Add the dried blueberries and ½ ounce of the rum to a cocktail shaker, then muddle the heck out of them. Adding just a little alcohol to the muddling process will help strip colors and flavors from the berries, some of which are not water-soluble. Muddle everything for longer than you think necessary.

Add the rest of the alcohol — the rum, the Aperol and the whiskey — then stir everything thoroughly with the bar spoon. Mashing the berries like you just did has smashed them into a solid layer on the bottom of the cocktail shaker, and this will break that up and give all the berries access to an alcohol bath.

(Optional) If you’ve got a few minutes, let the berry corpses marinate in this alcohol bath for a few minutes while you make yourself a piece of toast or something.

Add the lime juice (which is acidic but not alcoholic and probably won’t help with the blueberry stripping) and some ice to the shaker, and shake the mixture thoroughly, until you hear the ice start to break up into tiny pieces.

Strain the mixture over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Sigh with satisfaction at its beautiful purple color.

This is a really nice afternoon drink. It is definitely fruity but not overly sweet. The chili-lime rum works really well with the fresh lime juice. Blueberries love acid — lemon or lime juice especially. The dark purple from the blueberries blends with the bright red of the Aperol, giving it a classic violet color.

Given the number of ingredients, “refreshing” is probably not the adjective you would expect to describe this cocktail, but there you are. It is refreshing; you’ll just have to have a couple more to check that first assessment.

Featured photo: Purple Fruit Bat. Photo by John Fladd.

• 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup (80 g) dark rye flour
• ½ cup (42 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter, melted
• 1 cup (213 g) brown sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup orange juice
• 6 ounces (about 170 g) dark chocolate chips
• 1 cup (71 g) dried cherries or dried sweetened cranberries

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line three or four baking sheets with silicone liners or parchment paper

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients — the all-purpose flour, rye flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a stand mixer, or with an electric hand mixer, beat the brown sugar and melted butter together. Add the orange zest and juice, then the eggs one at a time. Beat the mixture until fluffy — about two minutes.

Turn the mixer to its lowest setting, then spoon the flour mixture in, until it has all been incorporated. Stir the chocolate chips and dried fruit into the batter, then chill in your refrigerator for at least 45 minutes.

Scoop six golfball-sized balls of cookie dough onto a baking sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet, then transfer to a plate or a storage container.

These are dark, fudgy cookies that are brightened by the zippiness of the orange and the flavor of the dried fruit. While not overly sweet, these are very rich. One to two of these cookies is perfect with an ice-cold glass of milk.

Featured photo: Double chocolate orange cranberry cookies. Photo by John Fladd.

This drink is all about appearances. It is over-the-top to the point where it feels like it’s missing its sparklers, three paper umbrellas and a peacock feather. This might be the most visually impressive drink you’ll ever make. Our hero — or superhero in this case — flirts with being just a little too much — too sweet, too boozy, too good-looking — but ultimately looks too good not to drink.

• 1 ounce kirsch, a high-octane Dutch cherry brandy
• 1 ounce coconut rum
• ¾ ounce grenadine
• ¾ ounce blue curacao
• 2 ounces plain seltzer or club soda
• Regular ice cubes
• Crushed ice or pebble ice

Tajin powder for the rim – this is a spicy spice flavored with chili and lime. It will help cut through what might otherwise be a very sweet drink.

Rim a rocks glass. Run a wedge of lemon or lime around the rim of the glass, then turn it upside-down and swirl it around Tajin that you have sprinkled on a plate. The spice will cling to the citrus juice and give you a rim of flavor when you sip your drink.

Carefully fill the glass about halfway with crushed or pebble ice, making sure not to knock any of the spiced rim loose.

In a cocktail shaker, combine regular ice, the brandy, the rum, and the grenadine. Shake thoroughly, then pour over the ice in your rocks glass, keeping straight to the middle — again, so you don’t mess with that pretty rim.

In a mixing glass — this could be an actual mixing glass or a largish measuring cup — stir the blue curacao, seltzer, and more regular ice. This will combine them without the seltzer losing its zip. Gently pour the blue mixture down the center of the drink, straining out the ice in the mixing glass. Because of the gas bubbles in the blue mixture, it is not as dense as the red mixture, and will rest on top of it in a separate layer, if the superhero bartender gods are with you.

If you’ve ever eaten chunks of mango or pineapple on a skewer that have had Tajin or chili powder sprinkled on it, you’ll notice a similar vibe to this spicy/sweet cocktail. The drink itself might have been too sweet, but lightening it up with club soda and replacing the sugared rim with Tajin has brought the operation back within operating tolerances.

Featured photo: The Superman. Photo by John Fladd.

From the 1930 Calumet Baking Book

• 2 cups (240 g) all purpose flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 2/3 cup (132 g) sugar
• Zest of two oranges
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ¾ cup orange juice — perhaps from the oranges you just zested.
• 1 cup (114 g) Grape-Nuts cereal — At some point in your youth you probably tried the dry, gravel-like cereal that comes in a very small box and its appeal was lost on you. Interestingly enough, the older you get the better the Grape-Nuts get. You find this listed as an ingredient in a surprising number of recipes starting in the 1930s. Presumably, Grape-Nuts were new, exciting, and a social signifier of some kind?

Mother’s Day is one of the three or four days of the year when non-mothers decide to make a big deal about cooking breakfast for the mom of the house. Muffins are a good choice, because they are easy, hard to mess up, and don’t leave the kitchen looking like a combat zone.

This is a good recipe to make with even young children. It’s super straightforward. The key is to measure all the ingredients out ahead of time. Most of us have the image of the joy of intergenerational cooking with children. In point of fact, even very young kids like the idea of cooking but have the attention spans of coffee-addled squirrels. The act of measuring out ingredients is indescribably tedious to them, whereas turning on a mixer and adding ingredients one at a time will take about 11 minutes — the length of a Bluey cartoon.

Preheat your oven to 375°F, and put muffin liners in 12 muffin tins.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together. Set it aside.

In your mixer, cream the butter, sugar and orange zest together. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula, then beat in the eggs, a little at a time.

When everything has mixed together thoroughly, add half the flour mixture (turn your mixer to its slowest speed to avoid poofing yourself with flour), then half the orange juice, then the rest of the flour, then the rest of the orange juice.

Remove the bowl from your mixer, and stir in the Grape-Nuts.

Divide the batter between the 12 lined muffin tins, then bake for 18 to 20 minutes.

Let cool 10 to 15 minutes, then eat with butter or topped with ice cream.

Featured photo: Orange Muffins with Grape-Nuts. Photo by John Fladd.

• 2 ounces botanical gin – This time, I went with Collective Arts Plum and Blackthorn Gin, and I do not regret it.
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• Club soda to top

Fill a tall, straight-sided glass — appropriately enough, this is called a Collins glass — about three quarters full of ice, then add the gin, the lemon juice and the simple syrup. Stir the mixture with a long-handled spoon or a chopstick.

Gently add club soda until it reaches almost to the top of the glass, then stir everything again.

Hold your drink up to the light and take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. Watch the bubbles rise to the top of your drink. Take a moment to remember a time in your life when you were proud.

In my case, I think of a time, many years ago when I finished waiting tables late at night and decided to treat myself to a quick drink before I went home. As I walked to the door to the bar, I loosened my tie, wrapped my apron into a small bundle, and stuck it under my arm. I opened the door and walked into the bar, only to remember that it was College Night, and the place was packed to the rafters with kids. There were easily 15 college students between me and the bar.

I was just considering turning around and just heading home, when Curtis — a legend among bartenders — shouted at all the college kids.

“Hey! Make a hole! Workin’ man comin’ through!”

The kids fell silent and opened up a path the bar. You could tell that they didn’t know what to think:

“How strange! Who is this old guy? And, what is this ’working’ that he speaks of?”

I got to the bar, and Curtis already had my drink waiting.

I gave Curtis a crumpled handful of bills from my tip money.

He didn’t do anything cheesy like fist-bump me, but he gave me a nod.

Just a nod, but the memory of that nod has stayed with me throughout the years since and has stiffened my spine.

So, that’s what I think about as I watch the bubbles in my Tom Collins bounce their way up through the ice in my glass, and then I take a sip.

It isn’t sweet. It isn’t super-fruity. It is extremely refreshing. It’s the sort of thing a grownup might drink.

What a working man might drink.

Featured photo: Tom Collins. Photo by John Fladd.

• A 2-inch chunk of cucumber – I like using the long, skinny English cucumbers; they seem to have a little more flavor. Go ahead and wash it, but don’t bother peeling it. The peel will add color and flavor to the finished drink.
• 2 ounces chili-lime rum – I’ve been using Captain Morgan’s for this. I do not regret it.
• 1 6-ounce can of pineapple juice

Muddle the cucumber thoroughly in the bottom of your cocktail shaker. This means smooshing it up with a stick. If you don’t have a muddler you can use a wooden spoon, or a beer bottle if it fits, or if you’re up for a project you can actually go outside and find a stick (wash it before using it). I’ve heard of a guy who cut off the handle of a child’s baseball bat, presumably not while his child was using it. The point is that you want to crush this chunk of cucumber, body and spirit, until it is the consistency of applesauce.

Add the rum, and shake your rum & cuke for 20 seconds or so. This is what is called a “dry shake,” meaning without ice. When you muddle herbs or fruits or vegetables, you do it for three reasons:

1. By smashing your cucumber up, you’ve given it a lot more surface area to interact with the alcohol.

2. You’ve broken up the cell walls inside the cucumber and released some of the flavor compounds from their tiny prisons. (If you are really committed to breaking up the cells of the cucumber, you can freeze it first. Ice crystals will poke holes in the cell walls before you even get to it with the muddler.)

3. So now you have all these flavor compounds floating around unattached. Some of them like water just fine and will dissolve into it without complaint. Others are pickier and are waiting around for some alcohol to bond with. By dry shaking your rum & cuke before diluting it with melting ice, you’re swooshing the flavor and color chemicals around in an alcohol solution. On a molecular level you’ve kick-started a party. As you shake it up you’ll hear a “slosh-slosh” sound, but the botanical molecules will hear Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train.”

At this point go ahead and add a handful of ice to the shaker, as well as the contents of the miniature can of pineapple juice.

Shake the mixture for another 30 seconds or so, then strain it over fresh ice in a Collins glass. It will have a gratifyingly foamy head on it. This drink is best suited to drinking with a straw.

This is a mildly refreshing drink. The cucumber flavor team has spread throughout the pineapple juice, keeping it from being too sweet. There is a subtle citrussy spiciness from the flavored rum.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.