Mocktail: Golden Orchard

There's a great book a lot of cocktail enthusiasts have recommended to me called The Flavor Bible. This genius tome is a must-have reference for anyone who likes to develop their own recipes for food or cocktails. It goes through dozens of ingredients, from achiote seeds to zucchini blossoms, and lists other flavors that work well with them. Some combinations are obvious, while others can be quite surprising. Under pineapple, for example, you'll find banana, coconut, lime, rum, and vanilla, but also chile peppers, curry, fennel seeds, maple syrup, and star anise. There's a gold mine of cocktail ideas right there! I've found the book particularly helpful with mocktails, where I often need a little creativity boost and suggestions for ingredients I wouldn't normally think of.

I turned to The Flavor Bible for this recipe because I had a definite starting place in mind: I wanted to do something with fennel. It's a favorite of mine, and I've been meaning to work it into a cocktail for some time. The Flavor Bible pointed me in the direction of a number of ingredients that are all supposed to work well with fennel and with each other: honey, almond, turmeric, and apple. It was a bit challenging to decide how to incorporate all of them; most went into a flavored syrup I made by simmering honey, water, chopped fennel, and turmeric together with a bit of almond extract added at the end. Non-alcoholic sparkling cider was a perfect apple base, and lemon juice and a bit of club soda evened out the flavors. I used Martinelli's because it's what I could find, but a drier cider would be even better - the Martinelli's is pretty intensely flavored and did its best to try and overpower the other ingredients.

This mocktail is sweet and tart, laced with subtle flavors of almond and anise. It would be a great one to pull out instead of champagne for a celebration, or to dress up the usual sparkling cider.

I could not for the life of me come up with a good name for this drink! There are too many ingredients to keep it descriptive. The color is distinctive, but anything containing the word "orange" seemed misleading. A number of fennel puns came to mind (Fennel Word, The Fennel Countdown, That's My Fennel Offer) but I just have too much self-respect. So Golden Orchard will have to do.

Booze it up: Try an alcoholic sparkling cider!

Golden Orchard

2 oz. fennel syrup*
1 oz. lemon juice
4 oz. sparkling cider
1-2 oz. club soda, to taste

Combine fennel syrup and lemon juice in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled and strain into a stemmed glass. (Alternatively, you can build the drink in the glass, especially if your syrup is good and cold.) Add the sparkling cider and the club soda. The amount of club soda will depend on your cider; the Martinelli's is very sweet and intensely flavored, and I felt like it needed to be toned down a bit. Garnish with a sprig of fennel.

Fennel Syrup:

1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup water
1 cup chopped fennel
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp almond extract

Combine honey, water, fennel, and turmeric in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and let simmer for about ten minutes. Remove from heat and stir in almond extract. Let cool slightly before pouring through a fine strainer. Let cool completely before using.

Mocktail: Consolation Prize

This is a mocktail recipe I've had bookmarked for a while, since long before I became pregnant. It comes from Smitten Kitchen, one of my absolute favorite food blogs. It's basically my go-to for looking up basic recipes, and browsing the archive by ingredient is an endless source of inspiration on nights when I have no idea what to cook. Every recipe I've tried from the blog has been delicious. So when I saw that Deb had posted a mocktail recipe during her pregnancy, I immediately bookmarked it, knowing the day would come when I too would be pregnant and desperate for something resembling a cocktail. The fact that it's basically a combination of a Pina Colada and a Mojito - arguably two of the most delicious summer drinks - only made me want one even more.

This drink is so delicious and refreshing. The smooth, creamy coconut milk smooths out the tart lime and pineapple into tasty perfection. The club soda lightens it up quite a bit, depending how much you use, and turns it from a thick and creamy treat to a refreshing summer sipper. There aren't many mocktails out there that make you feel even luckier than the folks who can drink, but this is one.

Also, can we just talk about the genius name for a minute? Possibly the best mocktail name ever.

Booze it up: I agree with Deb that rum would be the way to go. I'd reach for white rum myself, but as she points out, an aged rum similar to what you'd use in a Pina Colada would probably be lovely as well.

Consolation Prize

5 mint leaves
2 oz. pineapple juice
1 1/2 oz. coconut milk (well-shaken)
1/2 oz. lime juice
1/4 oz. honey
Club soda, to taste

Place mint leaves at the bottom of a shaker and muddle lightly to release the flavor. Add the pineapple juice, coconut milk, lime juice, and honey. Fill the shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice and top with club soda. Garnish with lime wedges, mint leaves, and/or pineapple slices.

Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

Mocktail: Tea Thyme

If you were looking for an excuse to drink this past weekend, I doubt you had to try too hard - between Cinco de Mayo and the Kentucky Derby, the margaritas and mint juleps seemed to be flowing. We didn't really participate in either celebration this year (are we already boring parents?!) but we did have our own news to celebrate - our ultrasound on Thursday revealed that we're having a boy! He was moving around like crazy during the scan, and has continued to be pretty active in there. It's fun feeling little kicks, especially now that we've seen his little feet.

After scrolling past photo after photo of frosty mint juleps on Twitter and Instagram, I decided to try and make a mocktail version of a julep for me and the little guy. In its purest form, the mint julep is not really a cocktail that lends itself to mocktailification (that's a word, right?) - it's mostly bourbon. Ok, it's basically all bourbon. But the general template of a julep, a sweet and herbal beverage served over crushed ice, definitely leaves some room for experimentation. I liked the idea of using peaches and sweet tea, both of which have a very southern feel, and I threw in some fresh thyme as well. The result is a refreshing mocktail that I think holds up pretty darn well against a mint julep or margarita. Cheers!

Booze it up: Bourbon. Lots of bourbon. :-)

Tea Thyme

2 1/2 oz. cold black tea
3/4 oz. lemon juice
1/4 oz. honey
3 slices peach
1 sprig fresh thyme

Place peach slices, thyme, and honey in the bottom of a julep cup and muddle well.* Add lemon juice and black tea and stir. Fill the cup with crushed ice. Garnish with a slice of peach and a sprig of thyme and serve with a straw.

*I personally like the pieces of peach pulp at the bottom of the drink, which get sucked up into the straw as you sip, but if you'd prefer not to have them then prepare the drink in a shaker or mixing glass and strain it into the julep cup.

Hot Toddy

In the search for a good winter cocktail, it's just about impossible to beat a Hot Toddy. Warm and strong and citrusy, it's the cure for chill and gloomy days, the ideal libation after a foray out into the snow and slush. It will warm you up through-and-through.

The Hot Toddy is a well-known cocktail for which I'm not sure there's really a definitive recipe. There are a ton of variations on the general theme of booze + citrus + sugar, and even the ones that call themselves "classic" vary greatly in their ingredients. Notably, a lot of them contained tea, which I didn't think was traditionally a part of the Hot Toddy. I ended up cobbling together my own recipe based on what I always thought a real Hot Toddy ought to be. I kept it simple, with nothing but bourbon, lemon, honey, hot water, and a cinnamon stick. I could definitely see playing with the base spirit and adding tea or other flavors, but for now this is utter perfection.

If this recipe isn't quite enough to stave off the winter cold, check out the round-up post for Mixology Monday CV over at Doc Elliot's Mixology!

History: The Hot Toddy as we drink it today probably comes from Scotland, originating around the 18th century. That makes plenty of sense, given the popularity of Scottish whiskey and the fact that the weather there begs for a nice warm beverage. The name may come from Tod's Well in Edinburgh. There's a poem by Allan Ramsey called "The Morning Interview" written in 1721 that refers to its water being used to make tea. In the passage, he describes how everything for a tea party has come from afar: the table from Japan, the tea set from China, the sugar from Amazonia. Only the water comes from Scotland:

Here Scotia does no costly Tribute bring,
Only some Kettles full of Todian Spring.

Tod's Well was a major source of water for Edinburgh. So it follows that if people began drinking warm water from the "Todian Spring" mixed with Scotch, they might begin to refer to them as "hot toddies."

However, like any good cocktail, the Hot Toddy's origin isn't so clear. It may actually originate much further back - and farther away - than the Todian Well. There are records from as far back as 1638 that refer to an Indian coconut tree as the "Toddy Tree." Its sap was used to make liquor called arrack (I've written about it before) that became very popular in punches.

Interestingly, there's a pretty big gap between either of these possible sources for the word "toddy" and any record of someone actually drinking a cocktail called a "toddy." The earliest use appears in the 1784 book A Tour of the United States by J.F.D. Smyth. He writes that between noon and one o'clock, the typical Southern "gentleman of fortune" would drink "a draught of bombo, or toddy, a liquor composed of water, sugar, rum, and nutmeg, which is made weak, and kept cool." This does help explain why the modifier "hot" needed to be added later on.

One of the earliest mentions of a "hot toddy" actually comes from a scientist, Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman, in 1808. On a visit to Britain, he wrote, "Both dinners and suppers, when they are meant to be hospitable, are here concluded by the drinking of a hot toddy." He describes how guests mix their own hot water, whiskey, and sugar in pint-sized glasses. "The ladies are not supplied with foot-glasses," he writes, "but the gentlemen occasionally lade out some of their own hot toddy into the wine glasses of the ladies, who thus partake of this beverage, although with much moderation." Hmph.

In his 1862 classic How to Mix Drinks, Jerry Thomas equates hot toddies with hot punches. This seems like further evidence that the toddy may have a direct link to arrack, the classic punch ingredient.

Thanks to Wonderland Kitchen for most of this historical info!

Hot Toddy

2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. honey (maple syrup also works nicely)
5 oz. boiling water
1 cinnamon stick

Add bourbon, lemon juice, and honey to the bottom of a warmed mug. Top with boiling water and stir briefly. Add the cinnamon stick. Garnish with a lemon peel if desired. Stay warm.

Icky-Poo Tonic

I thought about re-naming this cocktail. I really did. I'm sure I could come up with a much fancier, catchier medicinal name. But I just couldn't do it. Because in our house, it is known as Icky-Poo Tonic.

The name should really be self-explanatory. This is a curative cocktail for when you are feeling, well, icky-poo. Achy and sniffly and downright bad. The recipe comes from the incomparable Joy the Baker, and she neglected to name it, leaving it wide open for my ridiculous interpretation. So Icky-Poo Tonic it is.

I usually don't go anywhere near alcohol when I'm sick. My body is already working hard to fend off an infection, I figure, and is too busy to also be filtering alcohol out of my blood stream. But right around this time of year, as Boston begins to yield its warm summer to the frigid claws of fall and winter, I almost always get a bad cold. And it turns out that a nice warm cup of honey and vitamin C with a few glugs of bourbon is exactly what the doctor ordered. It warms you up through-and-through. It won't cure you, but I have yet to find anything that makes you feel quite so good when you're sick.

Icky-Poo Tonic

3 oz. boiling water
3 oz. orange juice
1/4-1/2 oz. honey
1/2-1 oz. bourbon or other whiskey

Pour orange juice into a mug and add boiling water. If this isn't quite hot enough for you, warm it in a saucepan or in the microwave for a few seconds. Add honey and stir well to dissolve. Add bourbon and stir. Feel better.

Recipe adapted from Joy the Baker.

Eveleigh Lemonade

Sometimes you can imagine exactly how a cocktail will taste just by looking at the recipe. That's how I felt with this one, and I knew it had to be good. Chamomile-infused tequila is utterly perfect with lemon and honey, yielding a refreshing twist on spiked lemonade. Since the scent and taste of chamomile usually reminds me of cold winter evenings, this makes a nice end-of-summer cocktail to help ease the way to autumn flavors.

I did find that the honey didn't mix in quite well enough, leaving the cocktail a little more sour than I would have liked. Adding more was hopeless since the drink was so cold by then, so I mixed in a tiny bit of simple syrup. What I'd recommend is using honey simple syrup (equal parts honey and water) instead of straight honey, and maybe amping up the amount to as much as 1/2 ounce. Try it and see what you like.

Also, the recipe calls for Cocci Americano, which is a white Italian aperitif wine. It is often used instead of Lillet in the Vesper Martini. Here, I did the opposite, substituting Lillet since I don't have a bottle of Cocci Americano.

History: According to this article, the Eveleigh Lemonade was invented by Dave Kupchinski, bar manager of Eveleigh in Los Angeles, for an edition of the Sporting Life sponsored by Combier. It's still on the menu at Eveleigh.

Eveleigh Lemonade

1 oz. chamomile-infused tequila*
1/2 oz. Cocci Americano (I used Lillet)
1/2 oz. triple sec
3/4 oz. lemon juice
1/4 oz. honey (or honey simple syrup to taste)

Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake with ice until well-chilled. Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with ice. Garnish with a lemon wheel.

*For chamomile-infused tequila: Imbibe provides instructions for infusing an entire bottle of tequila, but I wasn't really planning on making that many cocktails, so I took about three ounces of tequila blanco and mixed in a small handful of chamomile and half the zest of a small lemon. I let it sit overnight, but I think more like three hours would be better. If you don't have chamomile, just use a chamomile tea bag.

Recipe adapted from Imbibe.

Coal Miner's Daughter

Full disclosure: I chose this recipe for the lavender garnish. I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's just so pretty. Lately I've really been appreciating how much a fragrant herb garnish can do for a cocktail, and I was eager to find out what lavender would do for this one. And honestly? I think it's pretty transformative. The base of this cocktail - bourbon, honey, and lemon - is basically a Gold Rush. The ginger syrup adds a bit of spice and extra citrus, but it's that whiff of sweet, floral lavender that makes the Coal Miner's Daughter something special.

Incidentally, lavender is something I am not growing on my balcony, so I snatched some from a neighbor's front yard. I know, I know. But they have tons of it. Maybe I should go back over there and offer them a cocktail?

I made this recipe last week, while Food52 was having an Instagram contest for cold cocktails, so I snapped a photo and tagged it. It didn't get much attention at the time, but yesterday they included it in a roundup of 10 photos from the contest! Since I'm still pretty new to this whole cocktail photography thing, I was quite flattered.

History: The Coal Miner's Daughter was invented by Derrick Bass for Willie Jane in Los Angeles. This article talks about Bass' cocktail menu, and made me want to fly to Los Angeles just for a drink.

Coal Miner's Daughter

1 1/2 oz. bourbon
3/4 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. honey
1 tsp. ginger simple syrup*
1 sprig lavender

Combine all ingredients except lavender in a shaker with ice. Shake until chilled. Strain into an old fashioned glass with one large ice cube. Garnish with a sprig of lavender. Congratulations, you've struck gold.

*For ginger simple syrup, peel and slice a 1-inch piece of fresh ginger and simmer it in equal parts water and sugar for 10-15 minutes. Let cool and strain. It looks like the original recipe may have used macerated ginger, which is a little more complicated. This site has a recipe if you want to try it out.

Recipe from Liquor.com.