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Passion Fruit Mezcal Sling

Like I said last week, Tequila is pretty perfect for spring. But Tequila isn’t the only agave spirit out of Mexico that’s pretty good this time of year. We’re talking about Mezcal! Mezcal has been popular among cocktail nerds for years, but it still hasn’t caught on among the wider drinking public. But I’m a big fan, so I wanted to show off another way of approaching Mexican spirits before Cinco de Mayo. This Passion Fruit Mezcal Sling combines the tropical tartness of passionfruit, the smokiness of Mezcal, and Campari for a drink that is more tropical and exotic than your average margarita. –Andrew

Passion Fruit Mezcal Sling Cocktail Recipe by Liquorary

Passionfruit Mezcal Sling

2 oz Silver Mezcal
1 oz Passion Fruit Syrup*
3/4 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Campari

To make the passion fruit syrup: combine equal parts passion fruit juice and raw sugar in a sauce pan. Simmer over low heat, stirring frequently, until all the sugar is melted. Bottle and refrigerate.

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker filled two-thirds with ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and enjoy!

Passion Fruit Mezcal Sling Cocktail Recipe by Liquorary

This is a refreshing, lively cocktail, with lots of tropical fruit and verdant vegetal notes. There’s a definite smokiness, but, paired with the Campari, comes across more as an exotic complexity than an in-your-face edge. The Campari gives the drink a bit of bitterness on the finish, which helps balance the sweetness of the passion fruit syrup.

Mezcal is, like Tequila, made from the agave plant, a relative of aloe. (Technically, Mezcal covers all agave spirits, and Tequila is a subset of Mezcal, but we’re not going to get too deeply into this.) Mezcal is made from the heart of the agave plant, which is cooked in earthen pits, lending Mezcal the same sort of smokiness that Scotch whiskey gets from burning peat to dry malted barley. The agave is then crushed and mashed, traditionally with a horse-drawn stone, and then fermented and distilled.

Passion Fruit Mezcal Sling Cocktail Recipe by Liquorary

Mezcal has the same sorts of earthy vegetal notes as Tequila, along with a luscious smokiness. It’s a spirit that pairs well with lime, tropical fruit, melon, and cucumber, the sorts of flavors that bring out a fresh, almost juicy character from the Mezcal. So, when mixing a drink in a few days to celebrate all things Mexico, consider trying Mexico’s other great spirit.

*A quick note about passion fruit syrup: Passion fruit syrup is most properly made by simmering the juice with the pulp of whole passion fruit, which are tiny and hard to come by and difficult to work with. If you’d like to use pre-made passion fruit syrup, we like the syrups from BG Reynolds and Liber & Co. But if you’d like to try making your own syrup, follow the directions above for a version that is much easier to make!

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Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

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DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

Easter is this weekend! Did it sneak up on you? Or do you already have all of your egg decorating activities planned out? So far this season, I’ve gone all in on my love for all things hologram and sparkly with these DIY marbled hologram galaxy Easter eggs and these DIY hologram foil Easter eggs. This week, I’m sharing a couple of last-minute Easter egg ideas that can easily be pulled off with a quick trip to your local craft store – and today we’re starting with these fun DIY hologram glitter dipped Easter eggs!

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

The general idea behind these hologram glitter dipped eggs is roughly the same as the hologram foil eggs – but a whole lot easier to execute. Only three steps! They’re easy enough to do with tiny decorators, and if your kids love sparkly things as much as mine do, they’re pretty much guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser. Let’s make some!

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

Supplies

Pre-dyed hardboiled eggs or faux eggs

Hologram glitter and iridescent glitter

Mod Podge or school glue

Paint brush

Non-aerosol Hairspray (optional)

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

To make the DIY hologram glitter dipped Easter eggs:

Step 1. If you’re using hard boiled eggs, start by dyeing your eggs in your chosen color palette. I used a mix of deep blue, light pink, and lavender hard boiled eggs. The deep blue eggs were naturally dyed with red cabbage (I like this tutorial for cabbage dyed eggs) and left in the dye bath for several hours to achieve that deep blue hue. The lavender and pink eggs were dyed with liquid food coloring. Allow the eggs to dry completely.

Step 2. Pour some of the glitter into a small bowl or paper plate. Paint a layer of Mod Podge or glue onto one half of an egg. Holding the egg by the opposite end, roll the glue-covered portion of the egg in the glitter until you’re satisfied with the amount of coverage. Set the egg onto a drying rack or sheet of wax paper and allow it to dry completely. Repeat this process for each egg.

Step 3. Once all the eggs are covered in glitter and fully dry, take them outside and spray them with non-aerosol hair spray to seal the glitter on the egg. Revel in your ability to touch the glitter dipped egg without getting glitter everywhere. Yay!

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

I used a food safe hologram and iridescent glitter to make my eggs, but if you’re not worried about using a food safe version you can easily find hologram glitter at Michael’s and other craft stores. And if you’re worried about getting glitter everywhere making these eggs, don’t be! Seriously, hair spray is like magic when it comes to sealing microscopic pieces of glitter without compromising the sparkle factor. Just give the entire glitter-covered area a nice coat of hair spray and everything will stay put. I picked up the cheapest bottle of non-aerosol hairspray that I could find at my local grocery store and it worked like a charm!

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

DIY Hologram Glitter Dipped Easter Eggs

Just look at all that sparkle! The iridescent glitter is translucent, which creates a really beautiful tone-on-tone glitter effect with dyed eggs. But I still just can’t get over those rainbow sparkles from the hologram glitter. So pretty!

Photos by Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

You might have noticed that Saint Patrick’s Day has become something of a drinking holiday. I’m not a huge fan of this whole turn-a-meaningful-day-into-a-themed-drinking-day thing, because I tend to think that those days were already important to people for reasons other than drinking. I also think that drinking is something we should incorporate into our every day cuisines, and not something we should cram into wild days of excessive partying. So, if you’re looking for something to drink today that doesn’t require booze, we’ve got a great Matcha and Mint mocktail recipe for you. It’s green. Total coincidence. –Andrew

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

1 oz Matcha Syrup
1 oz Lime Juice
Mint Leaves
Tonic Water

To make the matcha syrup: combine a cup of water, a cup of white sugar, and 2 tablespoons of matcha green tea powder in a sauce pan over low heat. Whisk everything together until the sugar is melted and the matcha is dissolved. Bottle and refrigerate.

To make the mocktail: combine the syrup and lime juice in a highball glass. Add the leaves of a sprig of mint and gently muddle. Then fill the glass with ice, top with tonic water, and give a good stir. Enjoy!

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

Matcha – a powder made from carefully selected and dried green tea leaves – is a fun thing to add to mocktails and cocktails alike. It’s the same ingredient that goes into Japanese green tea, of tea ceremony fame. Matcha adds earthy botanical notes and a bit of tannic astringency – something that you might get from some spirits but that can be hard to replicate in a mocktail. A syrup made from matcha is also a deep, rich green color, which can make your drinks sparkle green.

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

Mint and lime are, it goes without saying, amazing and delicious together. Add in the matcha syrup and you have the foundation of a pretty good mocktail – sweet and tart and minty and earthy and richly green.

Matcha and Mint Mocktail

To that we add tonic water, and we can’t emphasize enough: real tonic water, made with actual quinine, is the only way to go for mocktails. (I mean, it’s important in cocktails too, but it’s a lot harder to fake flavors in a mocktail, since mocktails don’t benefit from the powerhouse flavors of booze.) Tonic water adds refreshing effervescence (and this is a really refreshing drink) and some of the bitterness that can be missing from mocktails. Bitter is one of the ways our brains recognize things that are really dangerous (like poison!) or really fun (like coffee!) or a little bit of both (like alcohol!). It helps elevate this drink into a legitimately complex and grownup mocktail.

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Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail

We find ourselves in the odd predicament of a winter snow and ice storm in mid-March, something that doesn’t happen too often in DC. So I’m in the mood for a dark and stormy mocktail to complement our weather: A Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail. â€“Andrew 

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail Recipe

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail

2 oz Cold-Brewed Coffee
3/4 oz Grapefruit-Vanilla Shrub
3/4 oz Rosemary Syrup

To make the rosemary syrup: combine a cup of sugar, a cup of water, and a sprig of rosemary in a saucepan over low heat. Stir frequently until the sugar has melted, then remove from heat and allow the rosemary to infuse for 1o-20 minutes. Strain out the rosemary, bottle the syrup, and refrigerate.

Combine the coffee, grapefruit-vanilla shrub, and rosemary syrup in a mixing glass and stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a candied cherry and grapefruit peel.

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail Recipe

Coffee is an incredibly versatile ingredient for mocktails, providing complex, bitter, and astringent notes that evoke bold spirits without the booze. Here, it serves as the backbone for a rich, bittersweet mocktail with an acidic edge.

But we didn’t want to just offer a glass of coffee. We also used a newly-released shrub from Element Shrub, one of our local DC-area makers. This shrub combines grapefruit and vanilla with apple cider vinegar; the bitterness of the grapefruit and the smoothness of the vanilla together evoke, surprisingly, chocolate – which adds another rich, dark layer to this drink.

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail Recipe

So, sweet chocolatey coffee – sounds delicious, but that’s not a mocktail. We needed another ingredient to elevate our drink, to give it that botanical edge that so many great cocktails have. Rosemary syrup is a versatile ingredient for both mocktails and cocktails, so don’t feel bad about making a full bottle of the stuff – you’ll use it faster than you think. It’s savory and herbaceous, a flavor profile reminiscent of herbaceous spirits like gin and dry vermouth.

Bittersweet Coffee Mocktail Recipe

As always, the goal with a mocktail isn’t to make a facsimile of a cocktail – it’s to make a drink that’s every bit as grown up and sophisticated as a cocktail, but without the booze. It doesn’t have to be complicated – just three ingredients are enough here.

Just remember, it is full of caffeine. Don’t drink too many of these late at night.

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Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Matcha Coconut Mocktail

Now that March is here, and with it a very early spring, we thought we’d spend some time with non-alcoholic mocktails, something we haven’t done since last January. So let’s start off with a bright, fresh Matcha Coconut Mocktail recipe that is perfect for this weather and all the buds that are just starting to pop on our trees. –Andrew

Matcha Coconut Mocktail Recipe

Matcha Coconut Mocktail Recipe

Matcha Coconut Mocktail

1 oz Matcha Syrup
1 oz Coconut Milk
1 oz Mint Tea, Unsweatened
3/4 oz Pineapple Juice
3/4 oz Lime Juice
Powdered Turmeric

To make the matcha syrup: combine a cup of white sugar, a cup of water, and a tablespoon of matcha powder in a sauce pan over low heat. Stir frequently until the sugar is dissolved and give it a whisk to make sure the matcha doesn’t clump. Bottle and refrigerate.

To make the mocktail: combine the syrup, coconut milk, mint tea, and juices in a cocktail shaker filled two-thirds with ice and shake well. Strain into a coupe glass and sprinkle powdered turmeric on top.

Matcha Coconut Mocktail Recipe

This drink is richly creamy and sweet-tart, with a vaguely tropical feel. The matcha – made from a finely ground green tea leaves – lends some verdant, astringent notes and a beautiful green color.

Matcha Coconut Mocktail Recipe

Without the turmeric garnish, this is a tasty drink, something like a funky smoothy. But the turmeric (which looks, appropriately, like pollen) adds just enough exotic spiciness, just a hint of bitterness, that the drink comes together as something complex enough to stand toe-to-toe with a cocktail.

Making good mocktails can actually be harder than making good cocktails. Liquor brings all sorts of complex flavors – sharp, astringent, bitter, bold – that are tricky to recreate without the real deal. But mocktails don’t have to be limp glasses of sweetened juice with a bit of soda. They can be complex and rich and layered too – they just require a little bit of extra work to find those magic ingredients that turn a drink into a real mocktail. And so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time, hold on to those ingredients – sharp spices like turmeric or bitter, astringent coffee are two good ones to remember!

Matcha Coconut Mocktail Recipe

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Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper