The Espresso Martini: A sweet, boozy and caffeinated cocktail to keep the party going.

The Forager’s delight cocktail blends the flavors of mushroom vodka, amontillado sherry and an emulsified miso brown butter syrup to make an unforgettable cocktail. If you want to wow your friends at your next cocktail party, you must make this drink. Since this is a blended cocktail, you could easily scale up the ingredients to make a large batch.

It wasn’t until I was developing the watermelon feta milk punch recipe, that it dawned on me to fat wash the spirit! Fat washing is a technique that used to extract ethanol and water-soluble flavor compounds from fat and infuses them into a spirit. The most common way to fat wash is to add liquified fat to a spirit, freeze the mixture, and extract the spirit from the fat.

Campari is the most iconic Italian aperitif. It’s bright red color is unmistakable and its bracing bitterness offers the perfect complexity to cocktails when used right.

Gin: It is a staple spirit in any bar. It’s in dozens of classic cocktails. The standards: Gin and Tonics, Corpse Revivers, Negronis, Martinis- shaken and stirred - though, never shake your martini - it waters down the drink! All gins have a botanical build for their flavor, which is infused into a neutral grain spirit, then distilled. But what if I told you, you could easily make your own, and to your own specifications, likes and needs for whichever cocktail it is you want to make.

This might be a polarizing opinion, but I just love floral flavors. I don’t get the soapy vibe that a lot of people often associate with rose water and other floral flavors. I mean have you ever tried candied violets?! They’re incredible! I came up with this recipe for lavender liqueur when developing my Rusty Nail riff - The Manicured Nail. The floral notes blended beautifully with the Drambuie and really highlighted the floral notes of the scotch itself.

Boozy, smoky and floral? Delicate florals are not typically commingled with boozy stirred cocktails, but the lavender in this cocktail really breathes new life into the Rusty Nail. The subtle smoke from the earl grey tea add an air of sophistication and the grapefruit oil gives just a hint of bitterness and accentuates the floral character of the Drambuie and lavender liqueur. It makes a wonderfully elegant night cap. One of my favorite scotch cocktails has to be a rusty nail - which has sadly fallen out of fashion.

I’ve been making milk punch for quite some time now and have never ventured into vegan milk punch ... until recently. I knew that there had to be a way to make a vegan version of clarified milk punch. Coconut milk seemed like the optimal candidate, the most obvious choice, because it’s essentially the same make up: water, fat and protein, just like in cow’s milk.

Watermelon & Feta salad is one of my summertime obsessions. It’s so refreshing on a hot summer day, and the sweet and salty flavor profile is definitely my kind of salad. As I was enjoying one the other day, I thought to myself, how could I make this even more refreshing? The answer of course - is to turn it into a cocktail!