Category: Drink

It probably goes without saying that the name of this drink is a reference to a particularly awful dad joke.

Why does a melon have to have a church wedding?

Because it can’t elope.

For this drink, step 1 is to get a cantaloupe.

It would be nice to have some sort of assurance that you’ll be able to get your hands on a good one — sweet, a little acidic, maybe with a hint of musk — but in life, love, and cantaloupes, there are no guarantees. Cantaloupes are fickle. You might get three or four great cantaloupes in a row, then have your heart broken by one that tastes like orange cardboard. You might have been inflicted with a handful of duds and you might be considering giving up hope, when infuriatingly a good one will knock you back to Square One, emotionally.

Do your best. Squeeze the melons. Smell them. Take whichever of them gives you a whisper of a promise.

Secondly, you’ll want a little 2-ounce bottle of fruit-flavored liqueur, like the ones you get on airplanes. You can find a rack of them near the checkout at a liquor store. If you’re like me, over time you’ll find yourself buying little bottles of exotic booze on impulse, and before you know it you’ll find yourself with a drawerful of schnapps and flavored whiskeys that you’ve never gotten around to doing anything with. Today one of them will have its Big Day.

Today’s special cameo performance will be played by (drumroll) pineapple schnapps.

• 2-ounce bottle pineapple schnapps
• 2 ounces fresh cantaloupe juice – Scoop out the inside of a fresh cantaloupe, seeds and all, and puree it in your blender, then strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. More than one, if you have them.
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice – about half a large lime
• 2 ounces plain club soda or seltzer

Combine cantaloupe juice, lime juice, and the contents of your tiny bottle of fruit-flavored liqueur with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, until you hear the ice start to break up into tiny shards.

Strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass, then top with club soda and stir gently.

Drink this with a straw.

Tasting fruity, and a little acidic, and a little zippy from the carbonation, this is a very good drink to have while petting your dog.

If you own a collie, you can call this your Melon Collie Baby.

Featured photo: Raspberry + chocolate. Photo by John Fladd.

Chocolate and raspberries are a classic combination. What makes this particular cake so very raspberry-y is that it is flavored with actual freeze-dried raspberries, not raspberry flavoring. There is lemon zest to brighten the flavor, and actual chocolate for chocolateyness. The rainbow unicorns will appear independently.

Cake

• 1⅓ cups (300 g, 2 cubes + 5 Tablespoons) butter
• 1⅓ cups (266 g) granulated sugar
• zest of 1 lemon
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅓ cup (80 g) milk
• 1 envelope (1.2 ounces or 34 g) freeze-dried raspberries

Ganache

• ⅓ cup (80 g) heavy cream
• 8.8 ounces (250 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Another 1.2 ounces (34 g) envelope of freeze-dried raspberries

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and sugar a Bundt pan.

Grind each envelope of freeze-dried raspberries. Sift with a fine-mesh sifter to remove seeds. Set each aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and raspberry powder together. Set Team Pink aside.

Cream the butter, lemon zest and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and then the vanilla. Spoon the dry ingredients into the mix, then the milk.

Transfer the pink batter to the Bundt pan, one large spoonful at a time, then smooth the blobs out. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes or until the cake reaches an internal temperature of 200°F. Let the cake cool for 15 minutes or so, then flip it out onto a serving plate, and cool for another hour or so.

After you’ve dusted your mahjong trophies or written a Portuguese love poem, return to the kitchen.

Heat the chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl for a few seconds at a time — 30 seconds, then 20, then 10, etc. — stirring each time, until combined and silky. Stir in the remaining raspberry powder, then spoon the ganache over the cake. Don’t worry if it’s drippy; it’s supposed to be.

Give the ganache a few minutes to set up, then cut slices, and serve with ice cream, or very cold milk.

Featured photo: Raspberry + chocolate. Photo by John Fladd.

Last Thursday was one of those days. You know the ones — you don’t really have anything to complain about, but you get on a mental hamster wheel and before you know it you find yourself scowling at the world, drenched in self-pity.

Fortunately, there is a solution for self-pity: rhubarb.

Even more fortunately, we are right in the middle of rhubarb season. As it turns out, aside from pie, rhubarb is a rockstar ingredient in cocktails. It is sweet and sour (well, OK, mostly sour, but it will be sweet by the time we’re done with it) and princess pink.

A rhubarb margarita, you ask? Yes, please.

Oh, you meant a rhubarb sidecar? Even better.

We’ll do something with gin this time (see below), but first we need to make some rhubarb syrup.

Rhubarb Syrup

• 1 pound or so of cleaned rhubarb stalks, chopped to half-inch dice. (The actual amount doesn’t matter too much, so long as you use an equal amount of sugar.)
• 1 pound or so of granulated sugar – the same amount as the rhubarb, by weight.
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Freeze the chopped rhubarb for several hours or overnight. This will form ice crystals that will poke holes in the rhubarb’s cell walls, releasing rhubarb juice more freely once we start cooking.

Later, combine the frozen rhubarb, lemon zest, and the sugar in a saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until you get a sort of rhubarb compote swimming in juice, and the juice comes to a boil. Stir in the lemon juice, then take it off the heat and set it aside for an hour or so to sort of collapse in on itself.

Strain through a fine-mesh strainer. Eat the rhubarb compote over ice cream or on a buttered crumpet, and use the pink syrup for cocktails.

Just such a cocktail – Rose & Rhubarb

• 2 ounces botanical gin – At the moment, I’m enjoying Hendrick’s Oasium very much
• 1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• 3/4 ounce rhubarb syrup (see above)
• 5 drops rose water – You might want to work your way up to five drops. Rose water can be tricky stuff. One drop too little, and you can’t really taste it, and one drop too much, whatever you’re making ends up tasting like grandmother soap. I had to throw away a perfectly good pear crumble once because I wasn’t paying attention and added a little too much rose water, and it ended up tasting like a rear-view mirror air freshener.
• 2 to 3 ounces plain seltzer

Combine the gin, lemon juice, rhubarb syrup and rose water with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, and strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Top with club soda and stir gently.

Sit somewhere with a gentle breeze and listen to a mostly forgotten song from your youth as you sip this — anything from Meat Loaf’s 1977 album Bat Out of Hell will serve this purpose very well. (Though, admittedly, that’s from my youth). As promised, this pretty, pink drink is sweet and sour and a little floral.

After two of them, you probably won’t take yourself quite so seriously.

Featured photo: Rose & Rhubarb. Photo by John Fladd.

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.