Child of Light (and Refreshing) Strawberry-Lavender Shandy

The brutal reign of summer continues for another month or so, so we’re going to depart from the booziness of my last cocktail for a low-alcohol refreshing drink. I present the Child of Light. 

This refreshing cocktail is based on a couple different sources of inspiration. Those familiar with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream may have come across the Liz Lemon-flavour of Greek yogurt, though I’m pretty sure it is only available in the US. 

Source: http://www.benjerry.com

The Liz Lemon yogurt is a blend of Lavender, blueberry and lemon. The flavours work well together, but primarily all you taste is sugar and blueberry. There’s a slight tartness from the lemon, but I’m pretty sure all of the floral taste I got was in my head.

But nonetheless it got me thinking about how to incorporate lavender into a cocktail. Then it hit me: Shandy (or Radler). Basically, a 1:1 blend of lightish beer with lemonade. This isn’t English lemonade by the way (what I would just call lemon soda) this is a blend of fresh lemon juice and water.

Child of Light by the way, is a fantastic game that KJ is hooked on at the moment. And since you play as the ginger protagonist I thought I’d make a ginger cocktail that’s a light red colour. 

Aurora from Child of Light                  Source: childoflightgame.tumblr.com

This recipe will make a pitcher of shandy. I’m going to use Titanic Brewery Golden Ale but you can use whatever you like as long as it’s light in colour and not too hoppy. Wheat beers work well with the fruity flavour, but the result will not technically be a shandy. 

Recipe (adapted from this and this)

100ml Fresh Lemon Juice (Juice from about 3 lemons)

300g Fresh strawberries, hulled and cut in half

400ml Water or Soda Water

200ml Ginger/Lavender simple syrup

500ml Lager or Ale of your choice

Chop up the strawberries and mash in a bowl. Strain them with a fine mesh strainer. The resulting juice should be be about 100ml. Combine ingredients except for water. Pour into pitcher and stir with water or soda water until fully combined. 

Your results should be about 800ml of fluid. Pour into pitcher and slowly pour in beer while stirring. It may start to foam up a lot at the point. Let it settle and then keep stirring. Pour into beer glasses and serve. 

For the Simple Syrup

100g Fresh ginger, chopped

3 tbps of Dried Lavender

2  tbsp lemon zest

200g caster sugar

250ml water

Bring water to a boil, combine with other ingredients. Stir until sugar fully dissolves. Remove from heat and let fully cool. Strain and bottle. Will keep in airtight container for up to a month.

Why are strawberries such good musicians?

Because they’re always jammin’ 

Auron’s Cucumber Cooler

For my first cocktail I decided to tweak an old favourite of mine. It’s a blend of gin, lime, basil and cucumber. This is pretty much the ultimate summer cocktail as it’s refreshing and extremely versatile. It’s more of a spritzer than a cooler, but I like alliteration. The name comes from Final Fantasy X’s Auron who always sort of remains calm in high pressure situations. It might seem like a stretch, but since his character is sort of a Kurosawa-esque samurai I should probably make a version of this with sake.

This cocktail is best with a mid-range gin, since the other ingredients will mask any bluntness in mediocre gin, but will also make the subtleties in a really nice gin go unnoticed. I recommend Bombay Sapphire, at 15 pounds it’s not too expensive and the slightly higher sweetness of Bombay blends nicely into the flavour. I used Whatever I Found in the Liquor Cabinet brand gin.

The reason I called the cocktail versatile is because you can make lots of little changes to suit your palate. This just happens to be the way I prefer it. You can substitute vodka for gin, though I’d recommend increasing the simple syrup ratio to compensate for the loss of sweetness. You can use rosemary instead of basil for your simple syrup.  Soda water can be swapped out for tonic water or left out entirely and served straight up if you’re anything like the guests at my barbecue.

Ingredients:

Ice

50ml Gin

20ml Basil Simple Syrup (Recipe below)

25ml Cucumber Essence (Recipe below)

10ml Fresh lime juice

Soda water or tonic water to top

Sprig of basil to garnish

Combine all ingredients except for soda and sprig in shaker. This is a dry shake so don’t use any ice. Strain contents over a short class full of ice, top with soda or tonic. Give it one final stir with the sprig of basil to make sure it is fully combined.

Basil Simple Syrup

50g white sugar

120ml water

10-15 fresh basil leaves

Bring water to a boil and stir in sugar and basil leaves. Once the sugar dissolves remove from the heat and let  cool. Once it’s cool strain the basil leaves out and the syrup is finished. It will keep in an airtight bottle for about a month.

Cucumber Essence

1/2 English cucumber

150ml water

Peel half an English cucumber and cut into chunks. Put into blender with the water. Blend until the cucumber is fully pulped. Strain the liquid into a container and discard the pulp. The essence will last for a couple of days in the fridge.

I was going to end every post with a joke. But I’m skipping the first week because every cucumber related joke I found was disgusting,