What better time to show of your cocktail making skills than this year’s rollover Christmas? The bold flavours offered by festive ingredients like Champagne, brandy, and rum offer lots of opportunities to get creative. These crowd-pleasing serves are packed with nostalgic Christmas flavours to help you celebrate straight through till Boxing Day.
French 125
Because it wouldn’t be Christmas without a little fizz.
The original French 75 arrived in Parisian cocktail bars shortly after the First World War. It’s essentially a Tom Collins – that’s gin, lemon juice, and soda – that drops the bubbly water and replaces it with Champagne. The name is said to derive from the 75mm field guns which formed the backbone of French artillery during the war and likewise packed quite a punch.
The French 125 takes things a step further, losing the gin and subbing in Cognac. We brits are partial to a drop of brandy come Christmas time so this extra decadent Champagne cocktail is perfect for the occasion. Using a youthful, fruity Cognac like Seignette VS (£31.95 – Master of Malt) makes for a drink with fresh notes of peach and wildflower honey.
Ingredients
25ml Seignette VS Cognac
15ml Fresh lemon juice
15ml 2:1 sugar syrup
Brut Champagne
Method
You can make the sugar syrup ahead of time by combining 2 parts sugar with one part boiling water, stirring until all the crystals are dissolved, and pouring into a clean container. Chilled down in the fridge, this 2:1 sugar syrup should last a couple of weeks.
Cut a few twists of lemon peel using a speed peeler or a small paring knife and set aside. Measure all the ingredients, except the Champagne, into a highball glass – fill the glass to the brim with ice and give everything a stir to chill and combine. Top carefully with Champagne, so as not to break the bubbles, and garnish with your lemon twist.
You can substitute other varieties of fizz for the Champagne but make sure they’re made using the traditional method and come with minimal added sugar. A nice brut crémant will work well, for instance, but prosecco will probably be too sweet.
Fancy Rum Flip
Flips are an ancient order of cocktails comprising eggs and spirit, that are well-worth bringing out of retirement when the occasion calls for luxury. This should be a treat for anyone who likes a White Russian, a Brandy Alexander, or a Baileys over ice. The only difference is that because flips contain no cream, they have more protein than fat, leaving them silky and decadent without being too cloying.
The trick with this recipe is using a good-quality aged Caribbean rum. Black Tot (£35.95 – the Whisky Exchange) contains a good slug of zesty Barbados rum, a generous helping of fruity pot still stuff from Jamaica, along with lots of other goodness besides. Temper that with a bit of Cognac-based Grand Marnier (£17 – Sainsbury’s) and you’ve got a richly flavoured cocktail that tastes of dried fruit, chocolate orange, vanilla, and baking spices.
Ingredients
50ml Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum
15ml Grand Marnier
15ml Rich sugar syrup 2:1
1 Free Range Egg
Nutmeg for garnish
Method
Crack the egg into your shaker, being sure not to include any errant pieces of shell. Add your rum, liqueur, and sugar syrup and shake hard without ice until everything is nice a frothy. You’ll want to keep a good hold of your shaker while you do this to keep it popping open.
Next open up the shaker, fill it with ice cubes, and shake hard for at least 20 seconds. You may want to wrap it in a tea towel to protect your hand from the cold. Fine strain, through a tea strainer or similar, into a large cocktail glass and grate a little nutmeg over the top.
Obligatory note about eggs in cocktails: Use the best-quality eggs you can get, so your Flip will be a nice golden yellow. The fresher the better. Red-lion stamped is always good.
Delicious sour
Another historic drink that’s deserving of a revival this time of year. This aptly-named sour pits apple brandy – a criminally neglected cocktail ingredient – against peach liqueur for a soft, fruity aperitif. The oldest known recipe appears in the 1891 text The Flowing Bowl and calls for a new world apple brandy known as applejack. However, most modern examples of the spirit fail to stack up next to good old fashioned French Calvados. Here we’ve used Avallen (£35 – Ocado) a light and fresh style that works particularly well in cocktails. Crème de Peche should be available at any well-stocked supermarket but French producer Briottet makes a particularly good example (£19.95 – the Whisky Exchange) that will be a great addition to your cocktail cabinet.
Ingredients:
50ml Avallen
25ml lemon juice
20ml Crème de peche
10ml 2:1 sugar syrup
Egg white (one white should do two drinks)
1 dash orange bitters (optional but recommended)
Method:
Put a cocktail glass in the freezer, cut a twist of lemon peel, and pre-squeeze your lemon juice. Dry shake all your ingredients without ice – again, being careful to keep the various parts of your shaker together – and then shake a second time with plenty of ice. Fine strain into your icy cocktail glass, squeeze the lemon twist over the surface of the drink to give it a spritz of citrus oil, and serve.
Hot Apple Toddy
This rich winter warmer sits somewhere between a hot toddy, a mulled cider, and an Old Fashioned. It draws inspiration from the spiced ciders that have been a part of our celebrations for centuries and also one of the original American cocktails, the Stone Fence. In the days before commercial mixers, Stone Fences were made by lengthening whiskey with cider.
Pitting a spicy Bourbon like Four Roses Original (£25.70 – Master of Malt) against a medium-dry cider layers tart apples with American oak notes of vanilla, caramel and cinnamon. The method given here makes serving hot cocktails to a crowd consistent and manageable. By combining the warm cider and the Bourbon just prior to serving, you preserve the softer notes in the whiskey and make sure you don’t cook off all the alcohol.
Ingredients:
1 litre off-dry cider
(Per serving)
25ml Four Roses Original
15ml 2:1 sugar syrup
Dash Angostura Bitters
Orange twist
Grating of Nutmeg
Method
Start by slowly bringing your cider to a low simmer over a gentle heat and keep it there – you don’t want it to boil or it’ll start to taste stewed over time. It’s nice to add a cinnamon stick, a few allspice berries, or half a tangerine studded with cloves but it’s not essential – most of our spice flavours will come from the Bourbon and the bitters.
Next, add your Four Roses, sugar syrup, and bitters to pre-warmed cups and top with a couple of ladles of hot cider. Garnish with a little grating of nutmeg and a twist of orange zest. This should be sweet enough, but you can always pass around a little extra sugar syrup if your guests fancy it.
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