The Impact Driver Cocktail (and Mocktail!)

At the DIY Awards Bash this year we’ll be serving up a signature cocktail to our attendees, but if you’re tuning in at home and unable to be at the event IRL, you can still treat yourself to the same bev, and we even have a non-alcoholic version as well!

Since this is the DIY Awards signature cocktail, going with a screwdriver was an obvious choice, but TBH I think a screwdriver is a somewhat gross cocktail. So instead, I decided to come up with something with a bit more kick to it, while still maintaining its OJ and Vodka roots. We punched things up by adding some ginger and pumped up the orange with Cointreau.

Because not all of you are drinkers, I put together a mocktail version too, which gives you that orange and ginger flavor with none of the alcohol!

Peep the videos below for the tutorial!

Impact Driver Cocktail

What you’ll need (makes 2 drinks):

1.5 Tbsp Fresh Ginger - chopped
2 oz Simple Syrup
2 oz Vodka
2 oz Cointreau or Triple Sec
3 oz fresh squeeze Orange Juice
1 egg white (optional)
Cocktail shaker
Muddler
Ice
Candied Ginger
Orange Slice
Skewer
Coupe glass

1/ Muddle the fresh ginger in the bottom of the cocktail shaker

2/ Add your simple syrup, vodka, Cointreau, Orange Juice, and egg white. Add ice and shake!

3/ Divide equally between two coupe glasses

4/ Garnish with a skewered orange slice and candied ginger

Impact Driver Mocktail

What you’ll need (makes 1 drink):

1 oz Orgeat Syrup
1 oz Lime Juice
1 oz fresh squeeze Orange Juice
Ginger Beer
Big Ice
Lowball glass

1/ Rub the rim of your glass with an orange slice, then dip it in cane sugar for the sugar rim

2/ Add the big ice to the glass (a few cubes of regular ice work too!). Pour in your orange and lime juice as well as the Orgeat Syrup. Give it a spin to mix.

3/ Top with Ginger beer (we used 1/2 bottle of Cock + Bull Ginger Beer for each drink)

4/ If you’d like, you can add the same skewer garnish as the cocktail version!

Enjoy!

Fig + Honey Cocktail

I love this cocktail so much.  I don't play around much with figs (I think my childhood hatred of fig newtons put me off of figs), but after making this recipe I really want to explore fig recipes more!  We’ve got folks in our neighborhood with a giant fig tree and I’m always curious as to when they are perfectly ripe… and if they’re actually going to harvest them, cuz I will gladly volunteer. I love the earthy flavors that the figs add to this cocktail, I think they really ground all the flavors, plus I’m a sucker for a bomb looking cocktail garnish.

Fig Puree

• 1 cup fresh figs, rinsed & halved

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 2 teaspoons water

• Juice of half lemon

Add everything to a blender and blend until smooth. You can make this ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.  Recipe makes enough puree for about 4 cocktails, but you can multiply for larger quantities.

Cocktail recipe

• 1 1/2 tablespoons fig puree

• 1 tablespoon honey

• 2 oz ginger ale

• 1.5 oz gin

• 2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Add the fig puree and honey to a cocktail shaker. Stir it together with a spoon until it is well combined. Add ginger beer, gin, and lemon juice and fill with ice. Shake until frosty and strain the mixture into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a halved, skewered fig! 

Perfect Summer Raspberry Frosé Recipe

So I'm sure it's no secret that I'm loving rosé (along with everyone else, right?), and since hot summer days are nigh, I wanted to try my hand at some Frosé!  When Stevia In The Raw contacted me to see if I'd be interested in partnering up for a fun summer cocktail recipe, it felt like the perfect time to try making Frosé. 

Since I've been trying to keep my sugar intake down on Keto, Stevia seemed like a great way to give my Frosé some sweetness without the extra carbs, and it's a zero-calorie sweetener which contains extracts from the sweet leaves of the stevia plant.  It comes in convenient 1g packets, so you can easily pop one in your iced tea to add some guilt-free sweetness!  I wanted to add a little something fun to this recipe, so I included raspberries, but if you want to stay really low-carb, nix the raspberries in this recipe!

3 cups Rosé wine (I used Ruza from Winc!)
2 cups Fresh Raspberries
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Stevia In The Raw Simple Syrup

01/ In a blender, blend the Rosé, raspberries, and lemon juice.  Pour the mixture through a strainer or cheesecloth to remove the berry seeds.

02/ Pour the mixture into ice trays and place in the freezer to freeze for a few hours.  Since there's alcohol in the mixture, it won't ever freeze solid (which is actually perfect for the texture!)

03/  Make Stevia In The Raw simple syrup by heating 1 cup of water with 1/8 to 1/4 cup Stevia In The Raw (1 packet of Stevia In The Raw® is as sweet as two teaspoons of sugar, so keep that in mind!).  Let cool.

04/ When you want to make your Frosé, empty the "ice cubes" into the blender and add 2 tsp Stevia In The Raw simple syrup (you can add more to taste). Blend it all together, (it'll quickly get a slushie texture) and pour!  Makes appx 4 servings.

I actually tried the Frosé with and without the simple syrup added, just to see how it changed the flavor, and I definitely prefer it with that little bit of sweetness added!  This is the perfect summer grown-up slushie, and I plan on spending the next hot day on my patio with a glass of Frosé!  The nice thing about this recipe is that you can keep it in the freezer until you're ready, so it's great if you want to prep for a party beforehand, or if you just want to keep it on hand for yourself!

Want more Stevia In The Raw recipes? Check out these summery recipes:

• Red, White and Blue Wine Spritzer
• Red, White and Blue Soda Float (non-alcoholic)
• Cucumber-Mint Limeade (non-alcoholic)
• Strawberry Rosé Popsicle Punch  

The product, information, and gift card have been provided by the makers of In The Raw® so that I could try the product and share my thoughts and information about Stevia In The Raw®. The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions of the makers of In The Raw® sweeteners.

Cheers Delivered

I've pondered the idea of a wine subscription for a while.  I used to be a beer drinker, but as I've gotten older I feel like beer just makes me sleepy, so I usually opt for wine these days.  Even more recently as I've ventured into doing the Keto diet, white wine and rose have been my lifesavers as their pretty low carb (and my favorite summer wines anyway!).  So when Winc contacted me to see if I would be interested in trying their wine subscription I was like, um absolutely.

To be honest, I pick wines at the grocery store based on how cool the label is (sorry not sorry I used to be a graphic designer, I can't help it!).  So having a wine service that evaluates my personal tastes and then has a professional recommendation for wines is rad.  And you can pick how many reds vs. whites you want in each box!  So for this summer box I went for, you probably guessed it, all whites.  It's summer!  All I want on hot summer nights are chilled sparkling wine or rose!

I'm super stoked about Winc, and they were kind enough to send over a discount code for me to share with you guys so you can get $40 off 4 bottles too!  Just head to trywinc.com/lizmorrow to get your summer wine fix!

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pumpkin beer and cheese tasting party

Halloween, I think because we're not yet in the parent demographic, doesn't mean tons of fun size candies and other sweet halloween treats.  For us, Halloween season (and fall in general) means the beginning of all the breweries releasing their pumpkin beers!  It seems like every brewery has a seasonal pumpkin beer on in their wheelhouse and no two pumpkin beers are the same.  Instead of having a sweets laden halloween party I thought it'd be fun to have a pumpkin beer tasting party instead!  

I picked up a bunch of different pumpkin beers (and I threw in my all time favorite ginger cider from Schilling for good measure), laid out a cheese platter for people to snack on between beer tastings, and everyone sipped on beers!  Whether or not you want to get really into picking apart the tasting notes of the beers is up to you, we found that by the end, the actual tasting notes started to devolve, but it was still a really fun time!

Beers we tasted:

Uinta Punk'n / Dogfish Head Punkin Ale / Elysian Night Owl / Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale / 21st Amendment He Said / New Belgium Pumpkick / Southern Tier Pumking (and Schilling's Ginger Cider)

Cheeses:

Kerrygold Dubliner / Blarney Castle / Skellig / Dubliner Soft Cheese Spread

tasted on Rustic Rosemary Loaf