Blueberry-Cardamom Champagne Cocktail
Sometimes in the dead of winter you just need a good, bright, fresh drink to remind you of the warmer days ahead. That’s been the case here lately. While it hasn’t been as cold as some years (nothing below freezing - yet) it has been cold and dreary. We are in the part of winter where there are no major holidays to celebrate and its too early to start seedlings for the garden. I call this the “purging” part of the winter. It is when I go stir crazy and drag things out of closets, the attic and wherever else Anthony and I have been storing things we don’t use regularly. Most of this stuff ends up at Goodwill or the dump.
This week, I was craving something light and bright to drink. I’m drinking less booze in 2020 but I’m not a full-fledged nondrinker. One of my favorite drinks is a French 75, named after a French machine gun used in WW I It is a delightful mix of gin, citrus, syrup and champagne. Indulgent yet light and refined, how very French. I couldn’t just settle on a French 75 though. Naturally, I had to make it a little more…extra. I dug through the spice rack and found some cardamom that was't doing anything useful and grabbed a few blueberries from the freezer. A little muddling, boiling and shaking and boom, a drink is born.
Ingredients
3 oz gin or vodka
8 blueberries
1 1/2 oz cardamom simple syrup (recipe follows)
juice of half a lime
2 dashes aromatic bitters
2 dashes rose water
Champagne
Directions
Muddle the bluerries and lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Add ice, the gin or vodka, simple syrup, bitters, and rose water. Shake well.
Pour the cocktail into two glasses filled halfway with ice, top with champagne and garnish with a lime slice.
