Your bar cart isn’t stocked for Halloween?! OH THE HORROR!!!
What’s more Halloween than a giant skull filled with vodka? Maybe some Bloody Mary Mix or a tiny skull adorned bar spoon? We’re stocking our bar cart this year with some matte black and smoky glassware. OK and yes, just a touch of gold too. And our cocktail toppers? Wax vampire teeth of course! After all it is Halloween. Let’s get spooky!
1. Crystal Head Vodka 2. Vampire Wax Teeth 3. Skull Bar Spoon 4. Mask Bottle Opener 5. Black Dipped Glasses 6. Cassiopeia Smoky Black Tumblers 7. Black and Gold Shaker 8. Taurus Bar Cart 9. McClure’s Bloody Mary Mix
Sadly, peaches are quickly disappearing from the farmer’s market this month so I thought I’d give them one final nod before we go full into Fall this week.
I don’t know about yours, but since it is the end of the season, my peaches are starting to look a little worse for wear. They’re RIPE, and maybe not so pretty looking anymore. When this happens, I fire up the grill and send them on their way Viking style (on fire).
Today just happens to be yet another drink holiday, but one I tend to enjoy: Rum Punch. Yes, even Rum Punch gets its own day now. But you know, Tuesday is a good enough reason too to enjoy one of these cocktails.
Keeping it simple, but full of flavor, this punch gets a double peach kick from grilled and caramelized peaches and a few good glugs of Bundaberg’s Sparkling Peach brew. We’re big fans of Bundaberg’s ginger beer so we thought we’d try their sparkling brewed drinks too.
The final rum punch comes together with an aged rum, fresh lime juice and the peaches. It tastes a bit tropical, with juicy peach flavors and a sour bite from the lime juice. The rum rounds it out with earthy notes and the sparkling peach gives it a pleasant, but not overpowering, bubbly lift. Nice and simple.
Yields 2-3 drinks
Switchel what?
The base of this cocktail starts with our 
3 ounces 
Anyway, Switchel quietly died down and I completely forgot about the saved article. I continued on with shrubs despite the name. (see 
Switchel recipes are all basically the same plus or minus an ingredient or two. It also batches really well. So you can mix up at gallon of it Sunday night and drink it all week.
Guys! Maybe I should back up here a second and remind you that switchel is NON ALCOHOLIC. Just like a shrub it contains no alcohol, but you can use it as a base for your cocktail creations. I even have a recipe for you I’ll link to. The flavor of this switchel on its own is sharp and tangy and almost like drinking a cocktail, or at least that’s what you tell yourself if you’re -cough- well into your second trimester and desperately miss cocktails. So, pregnant ladies out there, you’re welcome.
For my variation on a switchel, I added in some of my favorite Fall flavors: cinnamon, green cardamom, cloves and steeped that in a base of apple cider vinegar, ginger and maple syrup. The spices are subtle when compared to the strong, zingy ginger, but I like that those flavors are not too overpowering. The apple cider vinegar provides a sharp sour contrast that you can adjust by adding or subtracting the water from the mix. Personally I like that sour flavor and I find the drink quite refreshing. If you’ve found shrubs to be a bit too strong for you, you definitely might want to scale back on the vinegar and up the water a bit; taste and see.
This post is brought to you by Everclear. Recipes and ideas are my own.
So, one word of marketing and suddenly figs were a delicacy, not an unidentifiable fruit. Now they’re a common farmer’s market item. They’ve lost a little of their sultry shine but I still find them a touch exotic. And this past week I received a whole basket of them in our CSA box and decided they were ripe for a cocktail.
Today I’m mixing up this cocktail with Everclear as part of their 
Why mix with Everclear? Because I wanted to taste the ingredients and not so much another liquor flavor in the cocktail this time. It also makes for a stronger cocktail that doesn’t get watered down from the tonic. And what a complex tasting cocktail this is!
Letting the muddled figs steep in the Everclear for a bit makes the honeyed juice more prominent. Then to complement the figgy flavor, I created a vanilla syrup that gets some extra warming spice from black pepper, green cardamom, star anise and cloves. The vanilla really comes through but is much more complex in flavor from this spice blend. To offset some of the sweetness, a good dose of tonic water incorporates some bitterness into the cocktail while its effervescent bubbles distribute the flavors and bring out some aroma to your nose. The resulting cocktail is complex and yet clean tasting, refreshing and packs a punch. Ready to try one out?
Fig and Tonic Cocktail (27-32 proof)