Search Results for: SODA

Cuba Libre – and Happy National Cocktail Day!

I can never keep up with national food holidays, but National Cocktail Day? That I can do. And with warmer days on the horizon, I’m looking forward to getting back to chilled cocktails in highball glasses full of ice. So for National Cocktail Day we decided to celebrate with a bonus cocktail recipe for the week – a classic highball cocktail recipe that is super easy to recreate on a hot day: the Cuba Libre!

Cuba Libre Recipe / Oh So Beautiful Paper

As you’ll see in the recipe below, the Cuba Libre is basically a rum and coke with limes and plenty of ice. A classic combination. But you can also dress up that combination by adding your favorite bitters, fresh mint leaves, some extra lime juice, or even a favorite simple syrup. So when Keurig reached out about trying their brand new KOLD drinkmaker, we immediately thought of the Cuba Libre as the perfect fit!

Cuba Libre Recipe / Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Cuba Libre

8 oz Keurig KOLD Red Barn Craft Soda

2 oz rum

Half a lime

1/4 oz ginger-lime simple syrup (optional)

Muddle the lime in a highball glass, then add ice, rum, Keurig KOLD Red Barn Craft Soda, and simple syrup. Give it a stir and enjoy!

Cuba Libre Recipe / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Like the original Keurig (hot), the Keurig KOLD delivers on-demand beverages right at home – this time at the perfectly chilled temperature of 39 degrees. And each KOLD pod contains its own carbonation, so you don’t have to worry about CO2 canisters. For our Cuba Libre, we used the Cane Cola from Red Barn Craft Soda. The pure sugar cane in the cola is the perfect match for a Cuba Libre. I’d also love to try this combination of ingredients with the Persian Lime Seltzer instead of Cane Cola – I think it would be so refreshing!

Cuba Libre Recipe / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Keurig kindly sent me one of their new KOLD machines for review. All content and opinions are my own.

A Winter Fruit Mocktail

The snow has already started falling here in DC, and this storm is going to be a doozy. So what better to celebrate than a bright, tart, brilliantly red winter mocktail? Here’s a delicious winter fruit mocktail recipe that combines apple cider, sparkling grapefruit juice, and grenadine with a couple other surprising ingredients.  – Andrew

Winter Fruit Mocktail Recipe with Izze Grapefruit Soda / Liquoray for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Winter Fruit Mocktail

3 oz Apple Cider
1 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Grenadine
1 heaping spoonful Lingonberry Jam
Izze Sparkling Grapefruit

Combine the cider, lemon juice, grenadine, and jam in a shaker filled two-thirds with ice and shake well. Using a tea strainer or a Hawthorne strainer with a tight coil, finely strain into a highball glass filled with fresh ice. Top with grapefruit soda and enjoy!

There are lots of bright, wintery flavors happening in this drink: pomegranate and apple and lemon and grapefruit and lingonberry, a wonderful Scandinavian fruit that reminds me of a sweeter cranberry. Despite all that tart fruit, it’s more crisp and sweet-tart than sour.

Winter Fruit Mocktail Recipe with Izze Grapefruit Soda / Liquoray for Oh So Beautiful Paper

This drink actually could have turned out too fruity, too much like a sweetened fruit juice the way a lot of mocktail recipes I’ve seen turn out, but the addition of the sparkling grapefruit juice (we love Izze’s) adds a dry, effervescent finish that balances out the other juices and syrups.

Winter Fruit Mocktail Recipe with Izze Grapefruit Soda / Liquoray for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Jam and fruit preserves make an excellent addition to many cocktails, but they’re especially useful for mocktails. Alcohol adds not just flavor but also texture to a cocktail, and it’s hard to mimic the complex mouthfeel of a cocktail in a mocktail. Adding jam to a mocktail helps thicken it up and give you a richer, silkier texture (as long as you finely strain it and don’t end up with chunks of jam in  your glass).

Check back in next week for another fantastic Tiki mocktail! (This one has apricot jam in it.)

(Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, where we’ve been posting our experiments before they make their way onto this column!)

Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Mocktail Mojito

Mocktails are tricky: combinations of flavors and textures that work with booze in the picture don’t look anything like a real cocktail when you take the booze out. A Mojito without rum is basically just mint and lime and sugar – minty limeade. Nice, but not really a mocktail, not something you’d want to serve a non-drinking guest at a cocktail party. So coming up with a Mocktail Mojito means playing around a bit until you find something that works. – Andrew

Mocktail Recipe Ideas: A Mocktail Mojito / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Mocktail Mojito

1 oz Mint Syrup
1 oz Coconut Water
1/2 oz Pine Syrup
1/2 of a Lime
Tonic Water

To make the mint syrup: first blanch the leaves of 5-7 mint sprigs in boiling water for 15 seconds, then immediately plunge the leaves in ice water for a minute. (This will preserve the mint’s color.) Make a simple syrup by melting a cup of white sugar into a cup of water in a saucepan over low heat, stirring frequently. Combine the syrup and mint leaves in a blender and pulse until the leaves are chopped up but not liquified. Strain the syrup through a coffee filter or cheesecloth and bottle, then refrigerate.

To make the mocktail: muddle the half a lime in the bottom of a highball glass, then add the syrups and coconut water. Fill the glass with ice and top with tonic water. Give it a stir, garnish with a mint sprig, and enjoy!

Mocktail Recipe Ideas: A Mocktail Mojito / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Mint and lime and sugar, of course, but tonic water – bitter from the quinine – instead of soda water in a Mojito? But it makes sense! Cutting out the rum means cutting out a bitterness that the tonic helps replace. The coconut water adds a bit of a tang and some texture to the drink, while the pine adds a subtle depth of flavor that echoes some of the crisp, funky ester flavors you’d get from rum.

Mocktail Recipe Ideas: A Mocktail Mojito / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

So this mocktail isn’t going to taste like a real Mojito, but it comes pretty close to matching the look and feel of a Mojito, in a way that a glass of limeade wouldn’t cut it.

(Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, where we’ve been posting our experiments before they make their way onto this column!)

Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper 

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press

Today we’re bringing you a MEGA edition of Behind the Stationery with the one and only Rebekah of Wild Ink Press­! She shares a little bit of everything: why she started Wild Ink Press, a tour of their studio and small storefront, the process behind her designs, and so much more. Thanks Rebekah!

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Hello! Rebekah Tennis here – owner, designer, and general boss lady at Wild Ink Press â€“ and I’m delighted to take you behind the scenes of our stationery company!

I started Wild Ink Press­ in 2009, springing out of a desire to create a cherished, finished product. I have a BFA in Graphic Design, and while I loved my job working in a corporate design firm, I found the nature of branding design to be frustrating – websites getting tweaked over and over, logos stretched out of proportion, with no finality to the work. I longed to create art that was both finished (forever!) and something that I loved, and so Wild Ink Press was born to create beautiful paper goods that others would value and enjoy. My husband Matt listened to my wild-haired ideas and we both took a series of letterpress classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book, then made the plunge and purchased a 1908 Chandler & Price Platen 10 x 15 Press on Ebay.

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Our company has grown and expanded over the years (through lots of blood, sweat, and tears, believe me) and we now are a staff of seven with a retail and printing space in a converted old soda bottling shop in downtown Chico, Northern California. It houses our letterpress machines, inventory, and also our creative and packaging space. We bought the abandoned building, and it has been very rewarding to restore it to its former glory and let it shine as a 3200 square-foot open studio workspace. We now have three Heidelberg Windmills, a 1912 Golding Jobber, a Vandercook Universal I, and a baby Kelsey 5 x 8 press (for the kids) in addition to our original C & P. And yes, we do print on all of them!

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Behind the Stationery: Wild Ink Press / Oh So Beautiful Paper

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Navy Grog

Here’s another classic from the golden age of Tiki drinks, the goofily-named Navy Grog. It’s one of those great old recipes that shows how complex and versatile and unexpected Tiki drinks can be. Grog combines the expected – rum, lime, the usual suspects – with the unexpected (honey, in a tropical drink, what?). But it works the way Tiki should, building layers of flavors into something more than the sum of their parts. – Andrew

The Navy Grog Tiki Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Navy Grog Tiki Cocktail Recipe Card / Shauna Lynn Illustration / Recipe by Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Illustration by Shauna Lynn for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Navy Grog

1 oz Dark Jamaican Rum
1 oz Golden Rum
1 oz Silver Rum
1 oz Honey Syrup
3/4 oz Lime Juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
2 oz Grapefruit Soda

Combine the rums, honey syrup, lime juice, and bitters in a cocktail shaker filled two-thirds with ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled tumbler and top with the grapefruit soda. Garnish with crushed ice (shaped into a cone if you have the time or energy) and some tropical flowers. Enjoy!

The Navy Grog Tiki Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The rums and lime are pretty straightforward, but the honey syrup needs an explanation. Honey doesn’t blend well into drinks on its own, tending to settle to the bottom of a glass in a lump. But honey syrup blends beautifully. Just heat equal parts honey and water until the honey is fully melted. That’s it.

The Navy Grog Tiki Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The classic recipe uses white grapefruit juice – something that shows up in more recipes than I would have expected when I first started learning about Tiki – and soda water. I skipped that step by going straight for an all-juice grapefruit soda, a handy way to add fruit and fizz to a drink without sugar or artificial ingredients. But that’s a bit sweeter than grapefruit juice, so in go a couple of dashes of bitters for balance. The result is wildly citrusy and wonderfully rich, with deep rum undertones and a subtle sweetness.

The Navy Grog Tiki Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

An ice cone with a straw stuck through it is the Navy Grog’s traditional garnish. To make one, fill a Pilsner glass with crushed ice, run a straw through the center of the glass, then cover the ice with water and then drain. Slide the resulting cone, very carefully, out of the glass, then let it sit in the freezer overnight to solidify. Or, you can just get this kit from Cocktail Kingdom.

Grog’s a funny word. It’s also an old one, in use at least since the 1750s, and its origins are probably lost. It has connotations now of rum, and improvised, messy drinks. But it got its start in the daily rum ration that sailors used to receive, cut with water to prevent too much drunkenness, preserved with a bit of citrus juice, and maybe jazzed up with a bit of sugar…sound familiar?

(Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, where we’ve been posting our experiments before they make their way onto this column!)

Glassware by Liquorary 

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper