Happy Holidays from the Backyard Bartender.

Here's a warm and bright little sangria, perfect for sipping with the family this Christmas. The cranberry is a tart and tasty complement to the wine, a little bit of spice adds holiday cheer, and a cup of Lillet makes everything just a little more deliciously grown-up.

Cranberry Spice White Wine Sangria
serves 8
1 bottle (750 mL) dry white wine (such as Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc)
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 orange, sliced and cut into quarter-wheels
15 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1 cup Lillet Blanc
1 cup white cranberry juice
1 cup red cranberry juice (I used cranberry juice cocktail, since real cranberry juice is very tart and a bit hard to locate.)

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and allow to steep overnight. Serve over ice.


Thanks for reading, friends. I appreciate you all, and hope you have a wonderful, safe holiday filled with good friends, good times, and good drinks.

The best of the infused vodka, and what to do with it.

If you've been following this blog, you might have noticed that for some time I've been working on perfecting a few different kinds of infused vodka. Along the way I made some infusions that were totally disgusting (beet and horseradish...blech), some that were just underwhelming (lemon and fennel), and some that showed promise. Those I tweaked, and tasted, and re-infused, and re-tasted, until I had honed them into delicious examples of alcoholic perfection. But what to do with all this wonderful booze? Sure, the vodkas I created were tasty on their own, but this is a blog about cocktails, not a blog about drinking straight hard liquor. Even if it's been infused with cardamom.


So here are the best of the infusions, followed by ideas for what to do with them. Feel free to use your imagination and come up with your own drinks. Or, you know, take the vodka straight. I won't tell anyone.

Celery + Bay Leaf
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 celery stalk
2 celery leaves
1 dried bay leaf

Infuse in a sealed glass jar for 2 days, shaking occasionally. Strain out the other ingredients and store the vodka in the freezer for up to a month. (Or maybe even longer. I mean, it's alcohol - doesn't it preserve itself?)

This recipe comes from the article in Martha Stewart Living that inspired all the infused-vodka madness. I've already sung its praises in a previous vodka-related post, so here I'll just say that it is delightfully savory, with just a tiny bit of spice on the finish. I will also say that it makes a pretty incredible martini.


Celery Martini
3 oz infused vodka
.75 oz dry vermouth

Shake (or stir) with ice and strain into a cocktail glass garnished with a celery stick.

Besides making recipes from the magazine, I also came up with some of my own. Such as:

Chocolate, Cinnamon + Chipotle
1.5 cups vodka
4 tablespoons cocoa nibs
1 dried chipotle pepper
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half

Directions: see above.

So much going on here. Deep, rich, spicy, dark. Perfect for making a cocktail that looks innocent enough, but packs a little unexpected punch.


The Twisted Russian
2.5 oz infused vodka
.75 oz heavy cream
.5 oz sugar syrup

Shake (or stir) with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

And last but not least:

Vanilla, Cardamom + Cinnamon
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cardamom pods
3 medium-sized chips of Vietnamese cinnamon

Directions: see celery infusion.

Where do I begin? This infusion smells amazing and tastes nearly as good. You have the sweetness of the vanilla balanced against the woody, earthy flavors of the cinnamon and cardamom. Both cinnamon and cardamom, incidentally, come from Southeast Asia, and you know what else comes from Southeast Asia? Thai Basil. Conveniently, I am cultivating some in the backyard, so I decided to throw it into the mix and see what happened.


The Thai Gimlet
4 leaves Thai basil
2.5 oz infused vodka
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup

Add the simple syrup and basil leaves to the bottom of a shaker and muddle thoroughly. Add the vodka and lime juice, shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: very interesting mix of flavors. The Thai basil brings a nice balance to a drink that otherwise might be a bit too sweet. Drink up.

Further Adventures in Vodkaland

As promised...even more vodka infusions! Check out part 1 if you haven't already.

This time, I made one of the Martha infusions and tried a bunch of my own. All the infusions in this post are made with 1.5 cups of (Texas!) vodka and infused in a cool, dark place in an air-tight jar for two days, shaking occasionally. After the infusing period, strain out everything but the vodka and store in the freezer for up to 2 months.


Beet + Horseradish
1/2 small beet, sliced
3 thin slices peeled fresh horseradish

This one came from Martha Stewart Living. Sounds savory and intriguing, right? Not so much. I thought this was totally gross. It also, somehow, reminded me of peanut butter. Sorry, but I don't want my booze to taste like borscht. Or a pbj.

Hibiscus + Vanilla
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
3 dried hibiscus flowers

This infusion turned bright pink, almost mauve, so I was worried that the hibiscus flavor would be too powerful. I was wrong. The vanilla is quite strong. Only vaguely floral. Verdict: try again, with lots more hibiscus.


Chocolate, Cinnamon + Chipotle
4 tablespoons cocoa nibs*
1 dried chipotle pepper
1 cinnamon stick

*Cocoa nibs are chocolate in its rawest form, straight from the cocoa bean. They look a little like tiny chocolate chips, and taste very intense and a little bit bitter. It's a deep, dark, mysterious flavor that, it turns out, works great in vodka.

The cocoa is yummy, and rather intense, but that's how I like it. I taste the chipotle, but the cinnamon is MIA. I'm gonna cheat this one by straining out all the other ingredients and then adding an extra cinnamon stick to the vodka and infusing for another couple of days. Then I might need a second opinion. Volunteers?

Vanilla, Cardamom + Cinnamon
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cardamom pods
5 medium-sized chips of Vietnamese cinnamon

So. full. of. win.

Seriously delicious. Still vanilla/woody, but this time in a good way. No longer tastes like a candle. I still want to do one more tweak - I'm going to try this one more time with a little bit less cinnamon.


Next up: hibiscus vodka reloaded, the verdict on the chocolate/cinnamon mix, and a final go at vanilla/cardamom. Until then!

Baby, It's Cold Outside.

And cold weather calls for a hot drink. I give you...

The Bourbon Hot Toddy
(adapted from a book called The Art of the Bar, one of my faves.)

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp texas wildflower honey (look, local ingredients!)
1/2 cup boiling water
1.5 oz bourbon
slice of lemon

Add the cinnamon, anise, cloves, and honey to a heat-proof snifter. (Or a coffee mug, which will not be as pretty as a snifter, but will work equally well.) (I find "snifter" to be a very, very funny word. Also: how can you tell if your snifter is heat-proof? You could do what I did, which is: pour boiling water into it and see what happens.) Top with the boiling water and stir to melt the honey. Add the bourbon; squeeze the lemon slice and drop into the glass.


Hot, spiced bourbon. Delicious. Warming. Genius.

And, for those not booze-inclined:

The Hot Tea Toddy
This is the very first virgin drink to grace the pages of the Backyard Bartender, and some credit goes to Jen, who inspired me to make this. Black tea is one of those things - like champagne, and ginger - that mysteriously pairs wells with everything. Here, the honey adds a little sweetness, and the spices give the tea some extra warmth on a cold winter night.

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp honey
1 cup boiling water
1 bag Earl Grey tea (any black tea should work, but I tried this with earl grey because...that's what I had.)
slice of lemon

Add the spices and tea bag to a mug and cover with boiling water. Infuse for 3-4 minutes and then remove the tea bag. Add the honey and a squeeze of lemon, if desired.

Pirate Berry Infusion

The original recipe for the Pirate Berry Infusion comes from this book, which has lots of recipes for infusions using seasonal fruit. Apparently this is a book is for people who really, really like drinking, because the original recipe calls for two 750 mL bottles of rum, which comes out to...a lot of rum. I'm pretty sure that with nearly 2 liters of berry-flavored rum I could make a daiquiri for everyone I've ever met in my entire life.

Or just one daiquiri for an actual pirate.

So I cut the recipe in half, and made a few other tweaks, too - I substituted cinnamon sticks for cinnamon syrup (mostly because...I was too lazy to make a cinnamon syrup), and I used a little bit less fruit than the recipe called for and cheated by muddling it instead. The original recipe didn't call for any muddling, which I thought was odd because, well, blueberries are not infusing into anything in any big hurry unless you help them out a little bit.

It turns out that infusions are a lot harder to make up (or tweak) on the fly than your average cocktail. (Most cocktails don't require you to invest a week and an entire bottle of liquor.) I managed to screw this one up twice - the first one was too sweet (I forgot about it and let it infuse too long - whoops), and the second one had hardly any flavor at all. (I think the berries weren't fresh enough.) Finally, on the third try, I manged to get it Just Right.

Pirate Berry Infusion

1 750 ml bottle dark rum (I used Gosling's)

1 pint raspberries

1 pint blackberries*

1 pint Texas blueberries

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 tsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice**

*These were still available locally as of the making of infusion number one...but sadly, not anymore.

**Acts as a sort of preservative, without adding any discernable flavor.

Place the cinnamon stick in the bottom of a glass jar, and layer the berries on top. Muddle the berries lightly as you add each layer - emphasis on lightly. The goal is to break the berries up a little so they release their flavor into the rum, not smash them into a paste. You'll want to muddle the blueberries the most and the raspberries the least, because they are already kind of smooshy and will succumb easily. When you're done muddling, add the rum and the lemon juice. Seal the jar and let it sit in a cool, dark location for a week, or a few days longer if you want a stronger berry flavor. You can always taste the rum to check its progress. (I'm sure you don't need to be encouraged to do this.)

Once the appropriate waiting period is finished, strain the rum into a bottle (it will be a nice cranberry color - purdy), and you're ready for:

The Pirate Daiquiri

2.5 oz pirate infusion

.5 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

.5 oz sugar syrup

Stir all ingredients together in a glass full of ice. After stirring, let the glass sit for a couple minutes - you want to make sure the ice melts into the drink a little to mellow out the booze. (Or you can use a shaker and eliminate the waiting.) Strain into a martini glass, garnish with a cinnamon stick if you're feeling fancy, and enjoy.


Verdict: Sweet and berry-licious, with just the right amount of sour from the lime and a hint of cinnamon to boot. Yum.