The Grasshopper: A Year of Cocktails - March

Today's classic cocktail had its start, interestingly enough, during a prohibition-era cocktail contest in New York City.  While I'm not so sure how you hold a cocktail contest whilst the selling of alcohol is illegal, I guess it's the fine line between creating and selling... Nonetheless, this iconic drink was created during the romanticized era of speakeasies and jazz musicians.  Philibert Guichet, Jr., the owner and proprietor of Tujague's in the French Quarter of New Orleans, created the Grasshopper for the above mentioned competition sometime during the 1920's (dates vary in the sources I found...). After his creation received second prize in the contest, Guichet brought it home, began to serve it, and it grew in popularity over the next half century. The history of the the Grasshopper, combined with it's electric green color, make it a perfect drink for a Mardi Gras celebration! 

Although Mardi Gras was yesterday, we chose this as our March cocktail because its green, frothy color also works well for upcoming St. Patrick's Day celebrations (think an adult version of the Shamrock Shake!) and as a general welcome to Spring. It's also a great replacement when you run out of Thin Mint cookies. 

Due to the strong mint flavor of the drink, we chose to play up the creme de cacao flavor by rimming the glass with semi-sweet melted chocolate (chilling while the drink was mixed) and topping with some chocolate shavings. In my book this created to the perfect blend of chocolate and mint flavors, and a very refreshing drink. We used the classic recipe (below); there are many variations created by modern mixologists, but Christine and I feel that the original has stood the test of time and does not need improvement. 

Recipe: 

1 oz. green creme de menthe    

1 oz. white creme de cacao 

1 oz. light cream

Mix all ingredients with cracked ice in a shaker and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. 

Share with us in the comments how you will use the Grasshopper to celebrate spring, or which variations you like best! 

Cheers

Stacy 

Cherry Almond Cream - A Year of Cocktails (February)

February, such a chilly month in the middle of the winter, calls for a cozy drink that pairs well with chocolate! We discovered Cherry Almond Cream - which was delicious with some easy homemade chocolates. This drink is perfect for a Valentine's Day Celebration with your significant other, or a girls night in.

Cherry brandy drinks have been popular since the colonial era, the Mount Vernon website even shares the Washington family recipe for Cherry Bounce (very similar to this drink).  Cherry Heering, the quintessential Cherry liqueur, has been produced in Europe since 1818 and was even the signature drink on some European airlines in the mid-century. As American cocktail parties reached their peak during the post-war boom of the 1950's; it's no surprise that they included drinks influenced by European liquors. Many servicemen had the opportunity to try such drinks while deployed, and some- no doubt- brought them home as souvenirs.

 While the original recipe (found below) that we used called for a Cherry Brandy, we discovered that they are no longer widely available in the United States. We could not locate a distributor in a several state area, in the southeast region. If you can buy it in your area, grab some and consider yourself lucky! If not, you have one of two options... pre plan and make your own (soaking cherries in brandy for several weeks -recipes readily available online), or substitute. We took the later option, substituting an easily available Cherry Bourbon. We had to slightly reduce the amount of bourbon, as it was a bit too sweet for our tastes. You can play with the ingredients to suite your preferences as well.

Cherry Almond Cream Cocktail

3/4 ounces Cherry Brandy

3/4 ounces Amaretto

half and half

ice

Chocolate for garnish

Add liqueurs to a tumbler filled with ice, and add half and half to fill up glass. Stir to mix, and enjoy!

We created our chocolate garnish with leftovers from the chocolates we made to accompany the drinks- simply put a glob of chocolate on parchment paper to cool. Then carefully shave off a curl with a sharp knife and place the curl around the glass lip!

To make the chocolates...

Start with a silicone mold- we used a slim ice mold that we had available, but you could use any shape or style that you like. If you use a deeper mold, don't fill it more than about 3/4"

Adding the craisins and salt to the mold

deep with chocolate. 

Sprinkle crasins and sea salt in the bottom of your mold

Melt semi-sweet chocolate chips on the stove top or in the microwave. If you use the microwave, initially do one minute at 50% power. Stir and continue at 30 sec intervals, 50% power until the chips are melted. With a spoon, put the melted chocolate into your mold. After the mold is full, tap it gently on the counter several times to remove air bubbles. You will see them come to the surface and pop! 

Refrigerate the mold until the chocolate it set, then carefully pop it out. 

We found that the tartness of the crasins was the perfect foil to the sweetness of the drink. It might be even better with a dark chocolate! If you try any variations, share them with us in the comments!! 

Finished Chocolates

Bon Apetite!

Stacy 

A Not So Haunted Halloween...

My Little Buddies Ready for Snacks!!

I love, I mean REALLY love, making holiday themed snacks and meals. Sometimes they can get a bit too involved, but I find the most successful runs I've had have 2 things in common - they are fairly simple and fairly healthy. In that spirit, I wanted to share with you all some fun Halloween treats. What'd a mom to do when she wants to have a mini Halloween get together, but her children are in school all day and crazy busy the rest of the time? Offer to bring food to other people's children of course! Several of our friends with younger children hold a weekly playgroup, and were willing to allow their little sweeties to be my guinea pigs (don't worry, my children enjoyed the leftovers as an after school snack!).

Step one to planning your fall gathering is finding a location - I was very lucky in this regard, as our friend Stephanie is a fabulous hostess. Here house is always adorably decorated for the season, and she makes (and sells) felt wall hangings that are the perfect compliment to her decorating style. Shameless plug - if you'd like to see more of her designs, check out her Season of Restoration  shop on etsy.  The highlight (in my humble opinion) of our fabulous hostess, is her fancy coffee - I enjoyed a pumpkin spice coffee with sweet Italian cream, perfect for the fall weather that is finally reaching Richmond.

Step two - plan the menu! This took me to my fail safe planning destination - Pinterest!! You can find all of the original pins/ blogs for these ideas on our Pinterest page in the Blog Sources board. I decided to go with banana ghosts, pumpkin oranges, and a pumpkin spiced "puppy chow" mix. The bananas and oranges were a breeze to assemble and a big hit with the preschool crowd. The original poster of the bananas used mini chips for the eyes, it was a little more cute that way, but I think it looked ok with regular chips, and not worth the added chip buying - unless you have them around. I also looked at some ideas with skin on citrus "pumpkins" - with Sharpie drawn jack-o-lantern faces. They would be great for an elementary school party, but with preschoolers I decided that already peeled, skinless clementines were the way to go.

Top Pic was my first try!

Then I tackled the puppy chow... You can get the complete recipe here at Sally's Baking Addiction, one of the cooking blogs I love to use as inspiration. Being me, and absolutely hating colored candy melts (it's a real issue sometimes) I went with her suggested substitution of white chocolate. Helpful tip... She isn't kidding when she says to melt the chocolate first and then add the spices. I thought I'd "save time" by adding everything to the chocolate at the start... The joke was on me as I had to get more chocolate and try again! I did melt it on the stove instead of the microwave, and that works fine as long as you watch the temperature (medium at the highest!). 

Surprisingly enough, with both the littles at the party, and my kiddos after school, the fruit was the biggest hit (followed by the cream pumpkins picked out of the mix). The moms seemed to enjoy the puppy chow mix, as did my oldest - I'm wondering if pumpkin spice is an acquired taste? When I make this again, I think that I will replace some of the nutmeg and cloves with cinnamon. 

** ALLERGY DISCLAIMER**  

Knowing that one of our little guys has a peanut allergy, I checked the ingredients on the cereal.  The Cinnamon Chex is made with peanut flout, so I substituted Cinnamon Life and it was still tasty - and no different in texture than previous mixes I've had with Chex (the Chex is gluten-free though, so make the best choice for your crowd!). However, I never thought to check the chocolate. Thankfully mama was vigilant and I had the chocolate wrappers with me. The chocolate chips for the bananas were fine, but the white chocolate had a trace risk of peanuts. I've now learned that chocolate has a fairly high risk of peanut contamination! 

             

  

All in all, I had a great day with some absolutely adorable children. A big thanks to their mothers for sharing them with me! 

I want to leave you with a couple of ideas for big kids on the go as well... 

Christine made these spooky donuts for her family and they had a great time- breakfast and a toy in one! I think that I will be making these this Halloween, and taking advantage of her helpful hint (as I don't love extra plastic "junk" around our house) ... Buy cheap teeth, they can play fir a bit, then the teeth break and are gone! 

And I'm planning to make these jack-o-lantern peppers for dinner tonight. I'll comment tomorrow with the review from my guys and a picture. 

Hope you all have a great fall, I'm off to work on some fun ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas!


Enjoy the Moment.... Stacy