Fancy Toast

The other weekend I was at Passenger for the best pork cheek nachos in town. They typically have a board with the drinks of the day; the last item on the board was an item called "French Toast," involving Cointreau, Kumquat jam, and walnuts. Chatting with my wife, I mistakenly thought this was a beverage. It was not. It was actual french toast. (Fortunately, I didn't order it. I think I had a Corpse Reviver.) But I was inspired to try and create a drink that would taste like fancy french toast.

I used cognac as the based, because I thought it would give it a some nice undertones, and because it's fancy. I used Cointreau, both because the french toast used Cointreau and to replicate some of the orange-ness of the kumquat. I used hazelnut liqueur for the nuttiness, and Benedictine for breadiness.

It turned out pretty much like I was expecting. Some maple flavor might be nice, for the syrup, but it's definitely reminiscent of french toast. It's pretty thick, sweet, and boozy, so even though it's very tasty, I probably couldn't drink more than one. There are nice nutty notes, and a bit of orange. Recipe after the jump.

The Golden Ratio: A Cocktail Method

Photo by Juan Barahona, JBlaze B on flickr

A while back, I talked about a method for devising your own cocktails, the Mr. Potato-Head method. Truth be told, most of the time when I'm fooling around with mixology, I use what I call the ratio method. For a long time, I made Manhattans with the ratio 3 parts bourbon to 2 parts sweet vermouth to 1 part Cointreau. As I started occasionally making margaritas, I made them with 3 parts tequila to 2 parts lime juice to 1 part Cointreau. Noticing the similarity, I came up with a general rule. New beverages can be made tasty by mixing three parts of a base spirit with two parts of a blender and 1 part of a flavoring agent.

Let me explain. I take it you are all familiar with the idea of a base spirit. This is your tequila or whiskey or rum, or whatever. According to the ratio method, this is what defines your drink. The flavoring agent is what characterizes your drink. To explain what I mean, let me use hobos as an example. In this metaphor, 'hobo' is your base spirit. But there are lots of different kinds of hobos. There are drunk hobos, sleepy hobos, clever hobos, shifty hobos, etc. The drunk, sleepy, clever, or shifty? That's your  flavoring agent. Both of the drinks above use Cointreau as their flavoring agent, but you can use lots of different things. Amaros, like Averna or Cardamaro, make good flavoring agents. If you're making a Dirty Martini, which I recommend against, the olive brine would be your flavoring agent. 

Finally, we have the 'blender'. This is the portion of the drink that brings it all together, that 'blends' the base spirit and the flavoring agent. Very often, it's some variety of vermouth, but it can be lime or lemon juice as well, anything that helps combine the diverse ingredients together. Of course, you can use different ratios as well. If you're using a strongly flavored blender, you could go with 3:1:1. If you want to give less prominence to the base spirit, you could go with 2:1:1. Experimentation is key! There's recipe for a really tasty margarita after the jump.