Champagne Weekend

This weekend I've been catching up on champagne cocktails. The lost weekend has stretched into today, so it's a long lost weekend.

Sunday and today most of the cocktails used raspberry puree. I defroze a bag of berries and pureed them in the blender, which I then just stuck in the fridge (yes, minus the base; thank you, sis). The instructions in my calendar said to strain it, but what's a few seeds.

The first recipe called for champagne, creme de banana, cointreau, and the raspberries. It tasted better than I thought it would. The banana flavor didn't overpower everything, nor did the cointreau. I bet another fruit liqueur would work well too.

The second one has as ingredients the champagne, ginger beer (or ale), and a splash of apricot brandy. This one was less successful. The ginger ale tends to overpower the other flavors, and I didn't get much raspberry flavor. Just a hint of the apricot brandy came through, which was nice.

I winged the next one: an ounce or so of melon liqueur, a teaspoon of lemon juice, topped with champagne. OK, not great. It tasted like champagne with, well, melon liqueur. Not complex flavors at all and sweet. A little cognac might help this one.

Today I tweaked the recipe in my calendar slightly for this next one:

1 oz rum (I used Appleton's)
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz creme de peche (peach)
1/2 oz simple syrup
1 oz raspberry puree

Shake these on ice, pour into a chilled goblet or flute, top with champagne (I've been using Korbel Chardonnay). See the picture to my right (your left?). This is my first cocktail picture, so don't go run and grab Cartier-Bresson for his opinion.

I'm not big on rum with champagne, so this didn't put me over the top. And the peach flavor got a little lost with that much rum and lime.

I drank it with supper: steamed broccoli and some pork meatballs that I cooked in my convection toaster oven: pork cutlet pulverized in the food processor, drizzle of cream, panko, an egg, herbs de Provence, a little ancho powder, and a soy sauce dipping sauce. A nice meal. The dogs liked it too.