Caipirinha! Brazil's National Cocktail

My brother is having a Brazilian Barbecue this weekend and I wanted to come up with a drink to have at it. I did some research and found out that the Caipirinha is considered Brazil's national cocktail. Traditionally the Caipirinha is made with limes and Cachaça, which is made from fermented sugar cane. It is a pretty simple recipe and relies a lot on the alcohol which makes it difficult to make it into a mocktail. My first step was to search around and see if any Non-alcoholic recipes existed. I found a few, but wanted to test them out and then put my own mark on it as well. I recently purchased some sugar cane syrup which I thought would add an authentic taste since the alcohol is derived from fermented sugar cane. I used myself, my wife Whitney, and my sister Bieanna as the guinea pigs. We tried it with and without the sugar cane syrup. While it tasted fine either way, we preferred the addition of the sugar cane syrup to give it a little something extra. It turned out a success and here is the finished recipe:

Non-alcoholic Caipirinha

Ingredients
1/2 lime quartered
sugar
ginger beer
sugar cane syrup
crushed ice

Take the quartered lime and put it in the bottom of a lowball glass. Add sugar to taste (I used about a 1/2 Tbsp or so) to the lime. Muddle the lime to release the juices, but do not do it too vigorously or you will release the pulp and it will not be very nice to drink. Add crushed ice and then fill with ginger beer(I preferr Regatta Ginger Beer). Add just a dash of sugar cane syrup and stir. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Expanding The Bar

I have been searching high and low for new additions to my bar to make it more diverse and I have finally found something worth noting. Monin is a company that sells flavorings for bars and coffee houses. They have every kind of flavor imaginable, from simple fruit flavorings like Banana and Strawberry to exotic flavors like Caribbean Rum and Chipotle Pineapple. This is one of the best discoveries I have made for the bar for a long time. I recently purchased some different flavors to try out and they should be arriving shortly. I then want to have a mocktail party to test out the different recipes. These flavors have already sparked a lot of creativity for making drinks. The drink I really want to perfect is Bananas Foster. Bananas Foster is a dessert that was created in New Orleans by frying bananas in a caramel sauce and then adding Rum to the pan and lighting it on fire. Once the flame dies out (when the alcohol has been burned off) you serve it over vanilla ice cream. Whitney and I had this dessert for Valentine's Day and loved it. The ingredients I want to bring together for the drink version would be banana, rum, caramel, and vanilla. The base might be best as a milky base. Either half and half for an actual cocktail or vanilla ice cream for a frozen drink. Whitney and I will have to experiment and find out which one works best. I also picked up some Ginger Beer, Sugar Cane Syrup, and Hibiscus flowers which will also bring more diverse drinks to our repertoire.

Carlie is here!

The last few months have been crazy busy. Carlie Skye Carter was born December 8, 2009 and life has been a whirlwind ever since. Whitney's family came to visit for a couple of weeks after the birth and that was good to have them up. I was busy making plenty of Carlie Skye's for everyone haha. I also made a cake for her baby blessing. It was my first time doing a tiered cake on pillars. I used white fondant on a white cake. The bottom tier was 12 inches and the top tier was 6 inches. I also made some fondant flowers (which Whitney mostly made) and placed them on the border of the top tier and above a fondant ruffle border on the bottom tier. Whitney then had a great idea for the remaining fondant flowers. We arranged them in a 'C' on top of the cake. I then put a bow around the top tier. We saved the top tier in the freezer for Carlie to enjoy when she is a year old haha. Here is a pic of the cake:

Carlie Skye

So I have been thinking about inventing a mixed drink for a while now and finally found the creative spark and inspiration that I needed. A couple of weeks ago Whitney had been complaining about the baby kicking her, but she was also really excited for the baby to come and was getting the room ready. I decided to name this drink after her, Carlie Skye. It has a good kick with a little bit of sweetness, just like the real thing. The recipe follows:

Carlie Skye
4 oz Cranberry Juice
1 oz lime juice
1 oz non-alcoholic Triple Sec

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a CHILLED martini glass. I put the martini glasses in the freezer at least 5 minutes before I make this. The more chilled the glass the better the outcome.

Switching gears...Kind of

So it has been over 8 months since my last post. Things have been crazy in between. We are expecting a baby any day now and we have been getting ready for that. I have also been taking cake decorating classes through Wilton at Michael's. I am can't remember exactly how I decided to get into cake decorating, but I have really enjoyed the classes. I now make all the birthday party cakes for my family and I have even been hired by Weber State University to make a cake for a faculty luncheon. I will also include occasional cakes that I have made and cake baking/decorating tips as well as mocktails in my blog posts. So stay tuned haha.

Bora Bora

For Valentine's Day I decided that instead of going out to an expensive restaurant that I would make Whitney dinner. So I decided to make Chinese which I am pretty sure is one of her favorite foods. So I decided to make Kung Pao chicken. Well I wanted a drink that would go well with it and decided on the Bora Bora. I had never made this before and didn't know how it tasted, but it turned out to be one of our favorites. It is contains pineapple juice, lemon juice, grenadine, and passion fruit juice. You can use a cherry and/or a pineapple slice as a garnish as well. Finding straight up passion fruit juice proved a bit difficult, but we finally found one that Welch's makes. The recipe is below. It tasted great with the spicy food and is great all by itself.

Bora Bora

5 oz Pineapple juice
3 oz Passion Fruit juice
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz grenadine

Put juices in shaker with ice and then strain into a high ball glass.

New Found Favorites

This past week I have found a new favorite drink mix and a new ingredient. We were at Macey's and decided to buy a Cosmopolitan mixer and it was pretty good. We had tried to make Cosmos before, but these were really good. I also bought some Non-Alcoholic Triple Sec. Triple sec is a orange flavoured liquer that is triple distilled from dried orange skins. It is mostly used as a sweetening agent in its non-alcoholic form. We have used it with the Cosmo mix and it is great. I have used 2 or 3 ounces of the mixer, 1 oz of water and an ounce of the triple sec. Everyone that has tried it so far has really liked it.

Tips For A Well-Stocked Bar

Now that our first mocktail party is in the past I have been looking at what ingredients make a well-stocked bar for mocktails. The biggest thing to consider is what you will use the most. Anything extra can be bought when you are having a party or want to try something new. The main ingredients I have tried to keep in my bar are mostly fruit juices and mixers that we enjoy. The juices I have are pineapple, grapefruit, cranberry, orange, peach. We also like Pina Colada, Mai Tai, and Mojito mixers. Club soda, Sprite, and Ginger Ale are also key ingredients for mocktails. I keep a bit of simple bar syrup on hand as well. It is really simple to make and helps make any drink sweeter if desired. A cocktail shaker is really nice to have though not totally necessary for drinks made with mixers. But any drink you make by mixing different juices will warrant a cocktail shaker. The cocktail shaker not only mixes your drinks, but also chills them relatively fast if you do not want your drink served on the rocks. And of course for the real effect of a cocktail you will want fancy glasses. Right now we have low ball glasses and stemmed wine glasses, but I would eventually like to get martini glasses and margarita glasses. Garnishes and garbage also add something extra to your mocktail experience, but not necessary for everyday use. I mostly save that for parties.

Drink recipes...Finally!!

Well my plan to post the drink recipes the next day did not work out so well. Whitney and I both got colds a few days apart and then tests creeped up all in the same week. So here they are:

Classy Cricket

4 oz. Pineapple Juice
1 oz. Creme de coconut
splash of cranberry juice
2 oz grenadine
Maraschino cherry

Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and pour into glass. Add cherry for garnish.

Mai Tai

4 oz Mai Tai mix
4 oz Club Soda
splash of grenadine

Pour mix and club soda over ice in a glass. Mix well. Add a splash of grenadine and let it sink to the bottom.

First Mocktail Party

Well with Halloween also came our first mocktail party. Whitney really wanted a Halloween party and I really wanted mocktails so we decided to combine the two. We did not have the amount of guest we would have liked, but my brother Craig, his girlfriend Brynn, and my sister Brie at least showed up. I made a variety of mocktails and the most popular were the Mai Tai and Classy Cricket. I think we will have to work on the Cosmo recipe a bit because it was way way too tart to drink. I think the trick will be more Cranberry juice and less Lime and Lemon juices. But I will post the recipes for Mai Tai and Classy Cricket tomorrow. We also had strawberry margaritas, but I put them in the freezer too late and then we forgot about them. So needless to say Whitney and I will be having a lot of margaritas this week. We also have a lot of mocktail ingredients left over because we were planning on about 13 people but only 5 showed up. So yeah we are pretty popular haha. But it was still a lot of fun and I can't wait to do another mocktail party in the future.

Final Purchases and Alcohol Removed Wines

Well yesterday I finally ordered the last pieces we needed for our Halloween/Mocktail party. I ordered some liquor pourers (pictured above). They are pretty much oil pourers, but geared more toward the pouring of liquor. While we won't be using them for liquor (obviously), but it is nice to have those when pouring mixes and juices because it doesn't come out as fast and is easier to measure correctly. I also thought it would be a good idea to get a quart-sized bottle to put our bar syrup in since it is currently in a WSU water bottle haha. But we are finally done with all our purchasing for our home bar. (For now hehe) Along with Mocktails we also have tried a couple alcohol removed wines. The two we have tried are White Zinfandel and Chardonnay. Whitney liked the white zinfandel, but not the chardonnay. I did not like either of them. I am not a big fan of the fermented taste. My brother and sister were visiting when we opened the zinfandel and I think they liked it. I think I will just stick with the sparkling cider and grape juice when I want to feel fancy. If you ever feel the urge to try some, we got ours at Harmons by the rest of the mixers.

We're Ready

We have been preparing for our first Halloween/Mocktail party and we are pretty much set. Whitney was in charge of the decorations and I was in charge of the drinks. We both collaborated on the food. We were able to get the decorations pretty quick, but I thought it was weird that most stores had more Christmas decorations available than Halloween! Our first step in getting the drinks was deciding what drinks we wanted to have. Since we have never done this before we just searched a few databases for drinks that sounded good to us. We then made a list of ingredients and headed off to a few stores. We were able to get most of the ingredients at Wal-Mart and Target. This time we went more for a 'from scratch' approach for our mocktails and got a lot of juices, ginger ale, and club soda. We also got a few mixes that we hadn't tried before to see if they were any good. I am really excited to try the different recipes and get other people's opinions on what they like.

Starting Out Slow

Our experience with mocktails has been a gradual one. We started by just buying the frozen concentrates of pina coladas and daiquiris. We also would order those same kind of drinks at restaurants. We then progressed into buying drink mixes at the grocery store. These mixes are very convenient because the only thing you usually need to add is either ice for a frozen drink or club soda for an 'on the rocks' drink. We have experimented with various flavored mojito mixes and have enjoyed them a lot. We have also recently found a great cheesecake mixer at Target. It is very rich and more of a dessert drink. We also add a little bit of grenadine to this mix to give it a cherry cheesecake flavor.

We have slowly added things to our bar collection. One of the most important pieces to have when mixing drinks is a cocktail shaker. This allows you to mix all of your ingredients with ice and then strain the mixture into a glass without the ice. You can pretty much use any glass for a mocktail, but of course a fancier glass enhances the experience. So far we have lowball glasses and wine glasses. I would eventually like to add martini glasses and margarita or pina colada glasses for frozen drinks.

We are now getting to the confidence level where we can start to make drinks from scratch. The first thing I suggest is to go online and do a search for non-alcoholic cocktails. I found a ton of different recipes. Look through the ingredients of each drink and find some that sound appealing. We found that a lot of drinks use the same basic ingredients with variations here and there.

We found a lot of drinks that appealed to us and then bought all the ingredients in each. We tried to get a lot of drinks that took a lot of the same ingredients so we could make a variety of drinks without a whole lot of extra ingredients. Our next plan is to throw a cocktail party. We are going to incorporate this into a Halloween party at the end of the month. This will serve as an experiment for us in order to find out which drinks most people like and what ingredients go well with one another. After the party I will post the most popular drinks and their ingredients.

Mocktails: An Introduction

Mocktails are mixed drinks without alcohol. Most mocktails that we are familiar with are smoothies and virgin frozen drinks such as piña coladas, margaritas, and daiquiris. However, there are more options than these when it comes to non-alcoholic drinks. The most famous mocktail might be the Shirley Temple, named after the child actor. Most mocktails can be made by just removing the liquor from the cocktail, but original mocktails can be made as well. There are a lot of mocktail recipes already available, but you can also try to make your own by experimenting with different ingredients. Mocktail ingredients include fruit juices, fruit slices, sodas such as ginger ale and club soda, tonic water, and grenadine. The objectives of this blog are to experiment with non-alcholic alternatives to cocktails and to share recipes.