Rhubarb & Elderflower Cordial

I inherited a bottle of handcrafted, small-batch, Ontario cordial from my mother and had no idea what to do with it… until I read the recipe on the back of the bottle. Here’s how we made it. Ingredients 1 1/2 ounces dry gin (we used Sipsmith) 3/4 ounce Split Tree Rhubarb & Elderflower Cordial 1/2…

Frozé-eh

I’m generally not a fan of rosé, but God help me, I do love a pun, so when Canada Day rolled around, I busted out my best from both columns and made some frozé-eh. Get it?! Sigh… Ingredients (makes 4) 1 bottle rosé (dry and fruity, not sweet) 2 cups strawberries 3 tbsp sugar  2…

Blueberry Margarita

Spring is on the verge of being sprung, and that means bright, fruity cocktails. In this case, margaritas. The pantry was pretty bare, but thanks to frozen blueberries, shrivelled lemons, and the “emergency” tequila, we were able to whip up this… Ingredients (makes 4) 1/2 cup blueberries (we used frozen) 2 oz freshly squeezed lemon…

The Paper Plane

This little cocktail’s been on my radar for a while now, so when I stumbled across it on Bar Clementine’s “Cocktails to Try Before You Die” menu, I decided I should work on that. But first some totally unverified info brought to you by the Internets: Invented by a New York bartender named Sam Ross,…

The Smash

According to my beautiful advent calendar, it’s December 1 and family dinner night. And though those two things are reason enough to pour a cocktail, we’re also all too aware that the month is about to fly, and so are we, in non-coordinating directions. So! Raise a glass, we shall. Tonight’s offering, The Smash, found…

Cinnamon Rosemary Old Fashioned

So, there’s no good way to say it: It’s been snowing here at least once a week for the last month, and it’s only the first week of October. Cue the bourbon cocktails! I searched online a few different times, but everything seemed to lead to the same variation of a bourbon-pear-sage libation, until I…

Cachaça Spritzer

The weeks have completely flown by for me this summer, so when I blinked and discovered it was Sunday again, I decided to make time to shake, rattle, and pour. The pantry was a little bare, and I didn’t want to again default to tequila, so I settled on making a spritzer of some kind…

Orange Crush

It was time to break out the Dry Curacao. I had bought it a year ago knowing it was a common ingredient in classic cocktails and assumed we’d need it. But nope. Not even once has any stumbled-upon recipe called for it. So I went looking. What I found was this recipe for an Orange…

Gin & Jam

I’d been coming across a lot of gin-and-jam recipes this past year and thought it was time to try one. My timing, however, wasn’t ideal since my raspberry freezer-jam stash was long, l-o-n-g, gone. My best option? Good, ol’ E.D. Smith. Ed, as he’s affectionately known to me, makes an apricot passionfruit jam that’s tart…

Blood Orange Margarita

To mark the Lunar New Year in boozy style, we not surprisingly reached for three ingredients that pull at our celebratory heartstrings: silver tequila, salt, and lime juice. Then, to make it about the new year (rather than just us), we broke out the oranges, considered traditional symbols of abundance and good fortune. For this…