The Rose Baron: Bourbon Caraway Cocktail

I’m a pretty terrible geek. I’ve seen a lot of anime, but I haven’t really seen most of the Studio Ghibli’s films. KJ has though, and not being one to rewatch films often we’ve been making our way through some of the lesser known ones. Of these our favourite is The Cat Returns. Primarily for the suave cat protagonist Baron Humbert von Gikkingen. Also after watching a lot of Studio Ghibli I’m pretty sure Miyazaki is directly responsible for at least half of the Furries in our current generation.

I wanted to create a cocktail that mimicked the classy aura that the Baron exudes. So I started with my favourite liquor, Bourbon. I used Four Roses for it’s smoothness and also for it’s rye content. Because what goes with Rye? If you follow KJ at Need to Knead you’ll know that Caraway seeds are essential for a nice rye bread. So for my rye cocktail I made a caraway and lemon simple syrup. For some reason the Baron reminded me of a cat version of Tuxedo Mask from Salior Moon, so I thought I’d stick with the rose theme and add in a bit of rose water. The result is a sweet and flowery cocktail with a pleasant bourbon punch.

Ingredients:

50ml High rye bourbon or rye whiskey

15ml Lemon Caraway simple syrup (recipe below)

1 Squeeze of lemon

4 dashes rose water

Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker with ice, shake and double strain into rocks glass.

Lemon-Caraway Simple Syrup

2 Tablespoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon lemon peel

90g caster sugar

100ml water.

Bring water to a boil and combine with ingredients. Stir until sugar has dissolved then remove from heat. After it cools to room temperature strain and put into a clean bottle. It will keep in the fridge for about 2 weeks.

Why was the sad cat in a hurry?

He was a Russian Blue.

The Neighborhood – Studio Ghibli Cocktail

This was a really fun cocktail to make. It was the first time I started with a theme and worked back to the ingredients. Here’s The Neighborhood, based on My Neighbor Totoro.

 

Despite being a milk or soymilk if you prefer, based cocktail the Neighborhood is surprisingly light, this is mostly due to the low-alcohol nature of the cocktail. It’s mostly a nutty flavour with a bit of creaminess from the milk and a small fruity aftertaste.  I’ll explain a bit about the process.

I chose a wine glass to capture the rounded shape of Totoro’s body seen below.

Souce: http://youandmie.files.wordpress.com/

The trickiest part of the cocktail was recreating Totoro’s signature greyish colour. I considered a few different ingredients, from black food colouring to Kristoff Black. But I wanted to avoid artificial colours since what’s the point. I could have just coloured anything grey and then called it a day. 

I ended up choosing black sesame powder, though based on some issues that I encountered I would recommend using black sesame paste in the future or superfine black sesame powder since as you see from the picture there was a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the cocktail.

Since in the film part of Totoro’s character is giving nuts and seeds as gifts and his whole nature collection I thought a nutty/fruity cocktail was best.

 

Some of the ingredients may be a bit difficult for you to get your hands on. I recommend seeing if there is a specialty Asian store and a specialty liquor store near you.

 

Ingredients

15g Black sesame powder

220ml semi-skim milk or soymilk

50ml Frangelico or other hazelnut liqueur

3-4 dashes Plum Bitters 

Granulated sugar for rim

Combine sesame powder and milk in a pan on the stove over low heat. Whisk until powder dissolves and milk turns the desired grey colour. Transfer the mixture to a different container and put in the fridge to cool down.

While that’s cooling rim your glass with sugar. Coarse sugar is recommend as it adds a nice crunch and crystal look to the drink. 

Once cooled combine mixture with frangelico and bitters and shake well with ice. Double strain into the glass. 

Garnish with mint leaf and little umbrella. Big thanks to Kim-Joy for inspiring this cocktail with her Toroto cosplay she rocked last weekend.

 

 

A doctor made it his regular habit to stop off at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home. The bartender knew the doctor’s habit and would always have a drink waiting. But one day the bartender ran out of hazelnut extract, so he substituted hickory nuts. When the doctor arrived, he took a sip and exclaimed, “This isn’t a hazelnut daiquiri!”

“No, I’m sorry,” the bartender replied. “It’s a hickory daiquiri, doc.”