The Sleepy Hollow Cocktail

Don’t be fooled (and don’t, for gosh sakes, lose your head over it) by the fact that the first two items in this ingredient list are fresh products and not spirited liquids, or by the fact that the ingredient directly following them is a sweetening device. The hefty helping of gin in this drink does indeed give it quite a kick. Continue reading

The Lovely Lillet

Like many delicious aperitifs, digestifs, liqueurs, and other items in bottles, Lillet was underutilized for many years. In those somewhat barren times (and here I’m talking about, oh, the early 1960s through about the turn of the century) many of the more intriguing mixtures fell a bit off the cocktail map. Continue reading

Champagne Cocktails for the Holidays

The champagne cocktail is a classic libation to ring in the new year. It also works wonderfully at holiday parties with its festive hue. AJ Rathbun, GoodLife Report’s resident mixologist and author of Champagne Cocktails: 50 Cork-Popping Concoctions and Scintillating Sparklers has provided us with some interesting ways to jazz up your champagne toast.
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The Eye-Opener

 

It’s a known fact that no one, not even famously energetic early-riser Ben Franklin or history’s most prolific artist/scientist/bearded-robe-wearer Leonardo da Vinci bounds excitedly from bed every single morning. Some days, the optics can’t completely focus no matter how much rubbing or how many carrots. Some days, it’s almost too hard to even see the end of the bed, much less provide the motor to drive out of it. Especially those days when the day before lasted way, way into the night (or the next AM). On these lurching days, I propose ordering out for an Eye-Opener. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll leap up and invent a flying car, or even guaranteeing leaving the bed, no matter if you’re in the most entertaining city in the world. But you’ll go back to sleep happy.

 

Ice cubes

1-1/2 ounce dark rum

1/2 ounce Pernod

1/2 ounce crème de noyaux

1/2 ounce orange curaçao

1 egg yolk, preferably

 

1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add

the rum, Pernod, crème de noyaux, orange curaçao, and egg yolk. Shake well (even if eyes are closed), until the shaker gets icy.

 

2. Strain the mix into a cocktail glass or coffee mug.

 

A Note: If you like breakfasts sweet, add 1/2-ounce simple syrup, and don’t let anyone give grief.

 

A Note: Crème de noyaux is a pink-tinged, sweet, almond-tasting liqueur made from French fruit pits (“noyaux” being French for “fruit pits.” It tastes better than it sounds.)

 

Note: As this recipe uses a raw egg, please do not serve it to the elderly or anyone with a compromised immune system.

 

—A.J. Rathbun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A.J. Rathbun is the author of Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist (Harvard Common Press, 2007) and other books. The above recipe is excerpted from Good Spirits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perfectly Pimm’s

Unlike the Serve and Volley This Wimbledon Favorite Has a Secret Recipe

The Pimm’s Cup gets its name from Pimm’s No. 1 – a gin based, tea colored liqueur (though some maintain it’s a bitter) that is the base for this classic summer cocktail. Continue reading