So tonight I had one of my coworkers over for a drink and the challenge was, what do you make a picky palette. Let's start with the parameters. She can't have anything that's made from a grain so that takes out any and all whiskey based cocktails (sad I know). She also doesn't like Gin or Vodka. So this narrows down our options quite a bit. While the task is difficult, it pushes me to try to make something new. She's the reason I experimented to come up with the 'Smoking Bee' cocktail (see an earlier post for that one).
Now for the drinks, something I've been wanting to try lately was a negroni sour. The typical recipe for your classic negroni contains equal parts Gin, Campari, and Sweet Vermouth. The sour variation brings lemon, simple syrup and egg whites into the mix. For tonight, my fridge was rather bare, missing both classic simple syrup and egg whites. To make matters worse, I was also missing white sugar so my hopes of making simple syrup from scratch went out the window. Determined to try some variation of the negroni sour, I swapped the classic simple syrup for some leftover blackberry simple syrup I made previously. Unfortunately I was still missing egg whites so the end result didn't have that nice layer of foam but the drink was still pretty tasty. I was even able to get my anti-gin friend to try and she enjoyed! The end result of tonight's drink can been seen below:
Blackberry Negroni Sour
1 oz Gin
1 oz Campari
1 oz Sweet Vermouth
Juice from half a lemon
1/2 oz Blackberry simple syrup
Egg white or similar foaming agent (not included in below photo)
Shale all ingredients and serve up in a coupe glass. (if incorporating egg white, dry shake without ice then wet shake to chill)
For the second drink of the night, I went to satisfy my friend's palette and request for some kind of Aperol spritz. Missing a crucial ingredient and again determined to try something new I began to search the web for some inspiration. I was curious to see if there were any cocktails that included Aperol and Elderflower liquor and after a quick google, I stumbled upon this site (link). There was one small problem here...the vodka. Taking some inspiration from here, I ended up trying the below recipe which resulted in an interesting, yet tasty, sweet, yet bitter cocktail.
Sweet Aperol and Elderflower Spritz
1 oz Aperol
1 oz Elderflower Liquor
1/2 oz Blackberry syrup
Club Soda
Stir all ingredients except the club soda in a mixing glass to chill and pour into a chilled martini or coupe glass. Top off with club soda.
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