Category: cocktails

Cocktail of the Week: Disaronno Vanilla Float

Disaronno Vanilla Float

The last two weeks I’ve been experimenting with soda floats and liquor. It’s been interesting to see how different alcohols and ice creams taste in combination. Of course, it’s also been refreshing to have a cold dessert on hot summer evenings. This last float is a deliciously sweet mix of vanilla ice cream, Dr. Pepper and the almond liquor, Disaronno. Appropriately enough I call it a Disaronno Vanilla Float. I’m original like that…

Disaronno Vanilla Float
The ingredients

Disaronno Vanilla Float

  • 3 scoops vanilla ice cream
  • 1 oz. Disaronno liquor
  • chocolate syrup for garnish

Add three scoops of ice cream into a chilled glass. Pour Disaronno over ice cream. Fill glass with soda. Garnish with chocolate syrup.

Disaronno Vanilla Float

After this week, I’ll be returning to “regular” cocktails but this was a delicious way to end the experiment!

Cocktail of the Week: Pineapple Vodka Strawberry Float

pineapple vodka strawberry float

I enjoyed the Campari Peach Float so much last week that I decided to start experimenting with other alcoholic ice cream floats for the rest of the summer. It was a good call on my part because, so far, it’s been a real hot summer! Today’s “cocktail” is a variation of last week’s. I’ve exchanged the grapefruit for orange and the the peach ice cream for strawberry ice cream, and instead of an herbal liquor, like Campari, I went with pineapple vodka. Thus, this float is much sweater than last weeks. That’s okay though, its is the perfect accompaniment to  90+ degree nights.

pineapple vodka strawberry float
The ingredients

Pineapple Vodka Strawberry Float

  • 3 scoops strawberry ice cream
  • 1 oz. pineapple vodka (New Amsterdam’s here)
  • Orange soda
  • fresh berries to garnish

Add three scoops of ice cream into a chilled glass. Pour vodka over ice cream. Fill glass with soda. Garnish with berries.

pineapple vodka strawberry float

Pineapple vodka and orange soda don’t perfectly go together. But, the strawberry ice cream goes a long way in making the two place nice together. As I said, these floats are wonderful desserts for the end of the day or a nice companion for sharing a sunset on the back patio with.

Cocktail of the Week: Campari Peach Float

Campari Peach Float

 

Here in northern California we’ve been blessed with a week of days where the temperature has been above 100° F and the nights really haven’t been that cool either. Bicycling to and from work in business attire in this sort of weather is as unpleasant as you imagine it to be. With this kind of weather I’ve been defaulting to simple cold water when it comes to drinks or perhaps a beer. It’s just too hot to enjoy cocktails.

Until, I got this month’s Bon Appetit magazine that had a small section dedicated to floats, that delicious combination of ice cream and soda, that contained tips on turning your float into a boozy float! This concoction, the Campari Peach Float, comes from the magazine but the article inspired me and things kind of got out of hand here as I started mixing liquors, sodas, and ice creams… Turns out its hard to go wrong when you’re mixing these three things!

Campari Peach Float
The ingredients

 Campari Peach Float

  • 3 scoops peach ice cream/frozen yogurt
  • 1 oz. Campari
  • Grapefruit soda
  • Peach or nectarine slices (garnish)

Add three scoops of ice cream into a chilled glass. Fill glass with soda. Pour Campari over drink. Garnish with peach or nectarine slices.

Campari Peach Float

A little slice of heaven! Fruity, sweet peach, sour grapefruit, and the herbal bitterness of the Campari all work together to create a delicious, cool treat. Now I’ve got to get back to figuring out what to mix this strawberry ice cream with… Oh, I know this pineapple vodka and maybe some cream soda…. Hrm…

Campari Peach Float

 

Cocktail of the Week: Cherry Elderflower Fizz

Cherry Elderflower Fizz

Summer means stone fruit! I love peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries and more! On whim this weekend while I was grocery shopping I picked up a bag of cherries (probably too many cherries! I’ll have to freeze most of them) once I got home I didn’t quite know what to do with all of them. I did some light google searching to see what cocktails have cherries as a component. I saw some good looking drinks but many of them looked complicated or had liquor in them that I didn’t have access to. Well, necessity is the mother of all invention. Looking around my house I created a sweet fizz, the Cherry Elderflower Fizz.

Cherry Elderflower Fizz
The ingredients

Cherry St. Germain Fizz

  • 2 oz. elderflower liquor
  • 2 to 4 sweet cherries
  • ginger ale

In a collins class muddle pitted cherries. Fill glass with ice. Pour elderflower liquor into glass. Fill glass with ginger ale. Stir once. Garnish with cherry if desired.

Cherry Elderflower Fizz

This was really good! Especially considering it’s a drink I just threw together! There is definitely room for improvement though. I think ginger beer would work better than ginger ale, the beer has the extra oomph needed to compete with the sweetness of the elderflower liquor. Speaking of elderflower liquor, I might play with the amounts there as well, maybe cutting out an 1/2 oz. of the drink to reduce the sweetness and replace with vodka if I want it to still have the same kick. I muddled two cherries in my drink and I think I could use a few more to add more character to the drink as well as a little bit of lemon juice or lemon oil.

The more I think about it, the more ideas I have! I’ll post again once I’ve tinkered some more and have a new and improved Cherry Elderflower Fizz.

Cherry Elderflower Fizz

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