Every year Moya, my wife, makes a music mix for friends. This year she named her mix “2011 Saints.”

I’ve mixed up 5 different cocktails and bottled them to give to friends, along with Moya’s music mix. Together they are the perfect party starter – a music mix, and a pre-mixed cocktail. For most of these, just add ice and stir or shake and strain!

(left to right) Douglas Fir Gimlet, Winter Tale, Honey Saffron Liqueur, Pear Rosemary Cocktail, Autumn Leaves (and, yes, that's a magazine tree in the background!)

Here are the recipes:

Douglas Fir Gimlet (from New York Times)
Winter Tale (my concoction)
Honey Saffron Liqueur (from Eat Boutique)
Pear Rosemary Cocktail (from Bi-Rite Market)

Autumn Leaves (I don’t remember where I found this)
Combine in a mixing glass, stir, strain, garnish with orange peel:
3/4 oz Apple Brandy (I used Laird’s)
3/4 oz Rye (I used Bulleit)
3/4 oz Carpano Antica (or sub other sweet veromuth)
1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Cinnamon Tincture (fill a small jar with cinnamon sticks, add vodka to cover, let soak 2 weeks, strain and refrigerate)

Saffron Citrus Spice Infusion

Note: I wanted to use fresh turmeric but couldn’t find any. I found dried slices of turmeric in the bulk section of Rainbow Grocery

750ml bottle vodka (I use Skyy)
Clean glass jar for infusing
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1 mandarin orange
1 jalapeño pepper
1-2 inches fresh ginger
Pinch of saffron
2 slices dried tumeric (or fresh sliced turmeric might be even better)

Toast cumin seeds and coriander seeds in a pan until fragrant. Let cool.

Peel the zest off a mandarin orange (or other small orange-y citrus) in large strips

Remove seeds from a jalapeño and chop

Peel and slice 5-10 ginger coins (more if ginger is smaller, less if ginger is bigger)

In a jar combine the toasted cumin and coriander with orange zest, chopped jalapeño, ginger coins, 2 small slices of dried turmeric, and a pinch of saffron.

Cover with 750ml vodka, seal the jar with a lid, shake, put in a cool dark place for 2 days, strain through a coffee filter. Keep an eye on it and taste it periodically — I think it’s probably best to strain it when the saffron loses its color or after 2 days, whichever happens first.

The recipe for this Golden Ticket cocktail comes from a recipe I saw on Sub Rosa Spirits

Shake with ice and strain:

2 oz saffron citrus spice vodka
1 oz orange liqueur (any light, clean orange liqueur is probably best)
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
2 dashes orange bitters (I used Regan’s)

The ingredients:

The final golden color:

The Crispicy

2 oz Ginger Cardamon Vodka
1 oz Black Pepper Syrup
Juice of 1 lemon

Shake with ice and strain.

This makes a good batched and bottled cocktail to give to friends. Just mix up multiples of everything but the lemon juice and keep it in the fridge. Bottle it and gift it with lemons.  Instruct your friends to fresh squeeze 1 lemon with 3oz of the mix.

Black Pepper Syrup

1 cup water

1 cup sugar – it’s nice with brown sugar for color & extra flavor

15 or so black peppercorns

Boil 5 minutes, cool, then store in a glass jar in the fridge. Splash in an ounce of vodka to preserve it if you won’t use it up in the next week or two.

Ginger Cardamom Vodka

20 lightly crushed green cardamom pods

20 slices 1/4inch thick ginger

750ml vodka

Combine in a glass container.  Shake and check every day. I think it’s usually done (flavorful enough) within a day.

I dropped Lucy off at school and picked up some instant coffee from Starbucks.  Then I walked down to Bi-Rite Market to get some pastured eggs – they are the only store I know around the neighborhoods I walk (Mission, SOMA, FiDi, Castro) that regularly have pastured eggs in stock.  I expected to find eggs from Eatwell or Clark Summit or Soul Food Farm or Marin Sun Farm, and then was pleased to find pasture raised eggs from farms I’d never heard of: Lazy 69 Ranch and Sinclair Family Farm.

I picked up a bottle of Bushmill’s whiskey which reminded me of meeting Moya in 1997 and of marrying her for the 3rd time in 2008.

Irish tradition (I married an Irish gal)

I got another can of sweetened condensed milk which always reminds me of my fabulously missed late grandma.  And some Recchiuti extra bitter chocolate sauce which is probably heavier than the recipe requires, but it looked so much more delicious than the bottle of plain chocolate syrup.  Why skimp when the ingredients list is already so decadent?!

I dumped all of the ingredients in the mixing bowl. It’s a simple recipe – you just whip together fresh eggs, almond extract, vanilla extract, chocolate syrup, instant coffee granules, sweetened condensed milk, whiskey, and whipping cream.

While I was scraping out the cans of sweetened condensed milk I was reminded of my grandma’s voice telling the story of how her mom would always use every last drop of sweetened condensed milk from a can by pouring coffee in the can and dissolving the last bits of sweet milk with the coffee.

every last drop of sweet

I don’t like milk in my coffee but I’ll drink coffee out of the remains in a can like this.

Here’s the finished product ready for a label:

Store in the fridge, not by the tree

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Pre-mixed Winter Tale Cocktail

I’m going to label and decorate and gift these within the next couple of weeks. I wish I’d made more!  I don’t remember the size of these bottles but I think they hold 12 ounces.

I considered just mixing the vodka with the syrup and giving lemons on the side with a recipe so the lemon juice would be more fresh in the final cocktail that is shaken and strained and sipped.  Then I figured this would be drunk up rather quickly and the ease of just pouring, shaking, straining (or just pouring over ice and stirring), would be nicer for the gift recipients than giving them the additional task of juicing lemons.

I didn’t know what to do with the vodka once it was infused. I rummaged through our kitchen looking for ideas and inspiration.  We have a bunch of unused spices that we “inherited” from a friend who died a couple of years ago and I like to try them out in new things.  One of them is Penzey’s Mulling Spices.  We have lots of citrus in the fridge (limes, lemons, oranges, tangerines, clementines).  I smelled the mulling spices, the infused vodka, the clementines, and I was inspired.

Here’s the recipe for the batch that I made:

Cranberry cinnamon stick vodka:

• 1.75 L vodka
• 2 pints fresh cranberries
• 1 vanilla bean
• 6 cinnamon sticks

Mulling spice clementine syrup:

• 4 cups sugar
• 2 cups water
• 2 T mulling spices (I used Penzey’s)
• 2 clementines with leaves attached

Mixing:

• a lot of lemons
• 2 weeks of time

Infuse the vodka:

1. Crush the cranberries. I meticulously cut each of the cranberries in half and then used a potato masher to mash them.  I considered blitzing them in a food processor but thought that might make them too mushy.
2. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise
3. Pour the vodka into a large jar (I use a 3 L jar)
4. Add the crushed cranberries, vanilla bean, and cinnamon sticks
5. Shake or stir and store in a cool dark place.
6. After 1 day, remove the vanilla bean.
7. Shake or stir daily.
8. After 6 more days, remove the cinnamon sticks.
9. Shake or stir daily.
10. After 7 more days (or taste daily and stop when you like the taste), strain out the cranberries and anything left behind from the cinnamon sticks and vanilla.

Make the syrup (this will make a bit more syrup than you need for the batch):

1. Use a peeler to remove the peel in long strips from the clementine.
2. Tear the clementine leaves
3. Heat the sugar and water until it dissolves.
4. Remove from heat and add the mulling spices, clementine peel, and clementine leaves.
5. Cover and let it steep for approximately 12 hours.

Mix the cocktail:

1. Juice a lot of lemons if you’re going to make a batch – I probably juiced 15-25 lemons to make this batch

• 2 cranberry cinnamon stick vodka
• 3/4 mulling spice clementine syrup
• 3/4 lemon juice

Here are some of our glasses sitting on top of counter ledge getting ready for a dinner party a couple weeks ago

Here they are in Mad Men (via iTunes this week – I think this episode won’t air on TV til end of August)