Category: Drinks

• salted caramel iced cookies

This was ridiculously silly but also fun — I packaged my teas in test tubes. Why? I don’t know! They’re pretty that way. Hopefully the Patreon recipients will find some other use for the test tubes when the teas are done — fill them with bath salts or some such. And I have enough test tubes left for holiday gifting, so I hope my friends and family all like tea.

Just so pretty. I can’t even.

Rose Fizz

Mix syrup with citric acid and vodka, add ginger beer, top with rose petals and enjoy.

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(Rose simple syrup is basically boil water and sugar until sugar dissolves, reduce heat to simmer, add rose petals and cook for ten minutes, strain out rose petals; should store well in fridge for months. This batch I’m using is actually from last summer — planning to make ice cream with it tomorrow.)

If you’re growing roses and hibiscus, you can easily make yourself a lovely tea. I actually didn’t use my own hibiscus flowers for this, I should note — they aren’t blooming yet, so I used some purchased dried hibiscus, which you can buy in bulk online.

I added some citrus peel — slice thin and dry in a 200F oven for 20-25 minutes or so. Also some Ceylon cinnamon, but that, I didn’t try to grow myself.  I’m not sure I can manage cinnamon trees in Oak Park.

The little packets will be going out in the Patreon June treat boxes, though I did also pack up a nice big bag for a local friend. I like this tea with honey, lime juice, and a little candied ginger — brew a pot, and then enjoy it chilled on a hot summer day. Though it’s also tasty hot!

Kevin handed in his grading, and I have about an hour left to do tomorrow, I think, so I’ve started the summer cocktail experiments. Woot!

(This is where I pause and reassure my dad that I am still very much a lightweight and hardly drink at all, he doesn’t need to worry. I will nurse one drink like this for an hour, and most weeks, don’t have any alcohol at all. Okay, onwards.)

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Passionfruit Moscow Mule

(makes two servings)

4 ounces vodka — I used grapefruit & rose, mostly because it was just SO PRETTY, yes, Ketel One, you got me

1/2 cup passion fruit pulp

2 tsp lime juice

8 ounces ginger beer

fresh lime to garnish

I would say that this is tasty, but only if you like sour. Between the grapefruit vodka, the passion fruit, and the lime juice, you have three kinds of sour going here. If I were making it again, I’d rim the glass with jaggery sugar, for sure.

Kev and I were talking about how this compares to a whiskey sour (which is often my bar drink of choice; I’m a girl who loves the tang), and he said that whiskey has more complex flavors for the sour to play against, so it works better. I think that’s probably right — this cocktail is fine, but I wouldn’t say it’s really interesting, as it stands? Will have to think about how I’d want to tweak it.

Side note: I do have a particularly sour batch of passionfruit puree on hand right now, so that may be affecting my assessment slightly. Fresh passionfruit is often more sweet than this. So maybe just adding in a little sugar would address it. I’d also like to make it with some fresh passionfruit, because all the little seeds would look cool in the drink. So expect to see another variation on this sometime, whenever I can get my hands on fresh passionfruit. (Pete’s sometimes carries it…)