vanilla vodka

50 Shots of America–Minnesota

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Clouds in my Curacao

Clouds in my Curacao

Minnesota may well be the North Star State and the Land of 10.000 Lakes (actually 11,842–that just doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy) but after reading up on our 32nd state I’m more inclined to think of it as the shopping state! Did you know the first indoor shopping mall opened there and that Bloomington is currently home to Mall of America, a mall as big as 78 football fields?!

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

It’s also known as the Land of Sky-Blue Waters (Minnesota means cloudy water or sky-tinted water in Dakota) and the Gopher State.

Clouds in my Curacao

3/4 oz Vanilla Vodka
1/4 oz Blue Curacao
1 oz Tonic Water
dash Milk

Combine the vodka and curacao over ice and shake like a dancing gopher! Add the tonic water over the mixture and ice, swirl to chill and then strain into a small cocktail glass. Spoon in the dash of milk and watch the clouds roll before the drink settles into a concoction of pale blue sky.

50 Shots of America–Michigan

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Talk to the Hand

Talk to the Hand

On the cruise last January one of the couples we shared our dinner table with was from Michigan. The demonstrated exactly where by holding up their right hand and using it as a visual aid. Apparently this is a regular thing for Michiganders as the lower peninsula does resemble a mitten. (The UP–Upper Peninsula–is sometimes considered the bridge.) Because of this, the name for today’s cocktail came before anything else:

Talk to the Hand

4 fresh Cherries, 3 stemmed
3/4 oz Vanilla Vodka
1/4 oz Kirschwasser
1.5 oz Ginger Ale*

Muddle the 3 stemmed cherries with the vodka and kirsch in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice and shake like your trying to keep warm while ice-fishing. Add the ginger ale and stir a few times to combine and allow the ginger ale to cool, then strain into a chilled cordial glass. Garnish with the remaining cherry.

*Use Vernor’s for authenticity. Next best would be some ginger beer for flavor, last on the list being the dry-er (read as, less sweet) ginger ales from the grocery store. Still acceptable if that’s all you can find, though.

Even though the first European settlers of The Great Lakes State were French Catholics (a nice, peaceful trio of Jesuit missions that actually got along fairly well with the Native Americans of the time) who helped establish the peninsula as a major fur-trading center, Germans have become the largest single ancestral group in the centuries since then. They’re also the largest producer of cherries in the country–hence the kirsch.

My research turned up the fun fact that a Michigan pharmacist was the guy behind Vernor’s ginger ale. Thanks to progress you can find it outside it’s original area (even down here in Florida from time to time). What made Vernor’s different was the extra fizziness, the sweet taste and the souped-up  ginger taste. It was even an integral part of the ice cream soda known as the Boston Cooler (which has nothing to do with town in Massachusetts): ice cream and Vernor’s. Yum!

50 Shots of America–Maine

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Bitter Berry

Have a drink with Louie the Lobster (a leftover party favor from my 30th birthday party where he and his buddies were Crawfish Impersonators--it was a Bayou-themed party)

The Pine Tree State became the 23rd state of the Union on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise in order to balance the number of slave and free states. Before that, Maine was part of Massachusetts.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a native of Maine and wrote one of my favorite poems ever (and I’m not much for poetry)

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!

It described me well, then, when I first read it in high school and still fits pretty well. Anyone who “likes to stay busy,” sometimes to the point of exhaustion, can probably relate.

She isn’t, of course, the only poet or author or “somebody” to live in or be from Maine, (the list is long and includes Stephen King, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Andrew Wyeth, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Dempsey, and a whole bunch of folks whose names I don’t recognize but probably should) but she’s probably my favorite so far.

Bitter Berry

3/4 oz Gin
3/4 oz Cranberry Juice
1/2 oz Blueberry-infused Vanilla Vodka*
1 drop Angostura Bitters

*Soak a heaping tablespoon of dried blueberries in 4 oz Vanilla Vodka for a minimum of 2 hours. Muddling some of the berries increases the finished flavor.

Combine over ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled cordial glass and garnish with three of the plumped blueberries on a toothpick.

I normally don’t go for garnishes on these little drinks but the blueberries are significant as well as the toothpick itself: Maine is the main exporter of both blueberries and toothpicks, producing 20 million of the latter each day at the Strong Wood Products in Strong, Maine.

And don’t be fooled by the name–this drink isn’t actually bitter. Tart, yes, with a strong flavor from the gin, alone, but Bitters tend to enhance and warm the flavor of a drink. Plus, there’s a common ingredient between Angostura Bitters and the state beverage, Moxie: gentian root. I would have named the drink Wild Moxie but the company sued a neighboring state’s soda company for infringement for having the name Modox–I’m just not going to go there!

50 Shots of America–Ohio

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Ohio is the 17th state admitted to the Union but it wasn’t quite so simple as it sounds. It wasn’t until 1953 that they were official declared the 17th state retroactively.

As part of the Northwest Territory, an area became eligible for statehood once it reached a population of 60,000. In 1953 the realized there had been no formal Congressional resolution to admit the state into the Union even though President Jefferson signed the act that set Ohio’s borders in February of 1803. 153 years later it would be Eisenhower who declared the date of statehood as March 1, 1803.

That’s some serious bureaucratic back-log!

Despite having a state beverage of tomato juice (at least it’s not milk!) I couldn’t ignore the more obvious theme for this state. Ohioans are considered Buckeyes and most of us have encountered–on holiday cookie swap or another–the confection of the same name. Little balls of sweetened peanut butter dipped in chocolate but leaving a bit of the filling exposed to mimic the seeds they get their name from.

Now, to my knowledge there’s not a peanut liqueur (not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily) but we do have some other nut liqueurs to work with. And since there are two drinks already with the name Buckeye (one a gin-dry vermouth martini, the other a variation on the Irish Car Bomb) I’ve decided to call this week’s drink

the Buck-Shot

3/4 oz hazelnut liqueur
3/4 oz chocolate liqueur
1/2 oz vanilla vodka
1/4 oz butterscotch schnapps

Combine over ice in a petite shaker and shake it colder than lake-effect snow. Strain into a chilled cordial glass.

While I dearly love amaretto, it tends to overpower even in small amounts in these small drinks. Frangelico turned out to be perfect for the taste and, with the addition of the Butterschnapps you can almost fool yourself that it’s a peanut butter ball and not something more akin to Nutella.

50 Shots of America–North Carolina

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Poor North Carolina–it’s turn came during my week-when-nothing-got-done and then was further complicated by a serious case of cocktail block (much like writer’s block but instead of staring at a blank page you gaze at an unused bar). But, good things come to those who wait…

North Carolina, the Tar Heel State, was the 12th state to ratify the US Constitution on November 21, 1789. Another one of our original 13, it had it’s share of rocky starts before the colony really got it’s feet on the ground. One early attempt at settlement, the Roanoke Colony, disappeared without a trace and it’s still not clear what happened. They did get to record the first English birth in the New World, a Miss Virginia Dare, but like the rest of her fellow colonists her life is unknown. I considered creating a cocktail, the Truth or Dare, but it, too, wandered into the ether before taking root.

The Wright Brothers put Kitty Hawk on the map when they managed the first manned, powered heavier-than-air flight in 1903 (hence one of the state’s mottoes: First in Flight). Even though I’ve lost most of my fear of flying (I still get a little antsy on take-off and landing) I had mixed feelings about making a take-off (hah!) of the classic Aviator cocktail.

It’s not every state that has their own designated Carnivorous Plant, now is it? (They may, in fact, be the only one–cursory searches failed to find another.) Turns out the Venus Fly Trap is native to the Carolinas, specifically an area approximately 60-75 miles around Wilmington, NC. This, coupled with the plant’s resemblance to a slice of watermelon (the theme of two of their official state festivals, despite being the #1 producer of sweet potatoes in the US) finally put me on the path to a potential cocktail.

But wait! Despite an idea that took much experimentation (totally ruining my got-it-in-one streak from previous states, by the way) I have achieved an homage to a wonderful delicacy for which we can all thank Vernon Rudolph of Winston-Salem:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing the wonder that is the pillowy, hot, yeast-raised doughnut goodness fresh from the glazing curtain you just haven’t lived. I remember taking a field trip in elementary school and getting to see how they made the doughnuts, the pale wheels of dough bobbing their way through the hot oil and then traveling on a conveyor belt through the glaze and, oh, mmm, mmph…

*pardon me while I drool*

Now, then! Creating the alcoholic equivalent of this decadence was not easy. It took 3 batches of experiments over 2 nights and I was just about to give up and go another direction when, discouraged, I switched gears to making some beer biscuits to go with the soup simmering on the stove when the first round of inspiration struck.

You could have knocked me over with a bottle cap.

Of course! I was looking for that distinct yeasty flavor and what better way to get that but from a yeasty beverage! While some may cringe at the thought, the results were encouraging but far from perfect. Part of it was the beer I was using (I only had Heineken on hand) and then we just couldn’t get it sweet enough. I tossed in some of the nutmeg sugar syrup I had on hand but, again, it just wasn’t right.

The next morning in the inspiration chamber (aka, the shower) the missing piece snapped into place. After a trip to the store and some more experiments we humbly present the following:

The Glazed Doughnut

2 oz Honey Wheat beer*
1 oz Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/2 oz Butterscotch Schnapps
1/4 oz Vanilla Vodka

Combine over ice in a sturdy mixing glass and shake as if the fryer’s broken and the pre-church crowd is about to descend. Strain into 2 small cordial glasses (or 1 martini glass) and steel yourself for the oncoming rush.

Using a different beer definitely helped but the condensed milk was the clincher: it added a richness that milk + sugar syrup couldn’t match. The vanilla vodka, on the other hand, managed to smooth out the schnapps just enough when we found that lessening the schnapps made the beer too bossy but leaving it untamed took away from the yeast.

I could totally see this customized with a splash of chocolate or raspberry liqueur, too, for the specialty doughnut of your choice.

*I used Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss, a Pale Wheat Ale, and it seemed to do quite well for this application. If you’ve got more beer smarts than I and know of others that might work well in this sort of drink, by all means, let me know in the comments!