Categories
Cottage Life

Try a delicious Mandarin Margarita

This delightful cocktail is tangy and sweet, and is the perfect thing to brighten up your games night, cocktail hour, or afternoon drinks. 

Mandarin Margarita

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Course cocktails, Drinks

Servings 1 serving

Ingredients

  

  • 1 ½ oz silver tequila
  • ½ oz triple sec
  • Juice of 1 mandarin orange reamed (2 tbsp juice and pulp)
  • ¼ tsp maple syrup
  • Mandarin orange peel twist

Instructions

 

  • To a cocktail shaker with a cup of ice, add tequila, triple sec, mandarin juice, and maple syrup.
  • Cover and shake hard for 20 seconds, then pour into a tumbler and garnish with a twist of mandarin.

Keyword alcoholic drinks, Cocktails, Drinks, Mandarin Margarita
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

4 non-alcoholic swaps for your favourite cocktails

Drinking glasses you need at the cottage, according to a mixologist

 

Categories
Cottage Life

7 (other) Canadian cocktails to try

Move over, Caesar! These seven cocktails have Canadian roots too.

Moose Milk

The Canadian navy, army, and air force all claim to have invented this one. The milkshake-like concoction includes rum, coffee liqueur, ice cream, and maple syrup, plus nutmeg and cinnamon. Huh. It’s possible that we’d rather drink actual milk from a moose, but sure.

Get the recipe.

The Caribou

Combine red wine, rye whiskey, and maple syrup for this sweet take on mulled wine. The drink allegedly originated from an old fur-trapper’s drink that mixed whiskey with caribou blood. Well, desperate times call for…something desperately disgusting, apparently.

Get the recipe.

The B-52

A bartender in Banff, Alta., named Peter Fich created this cocktail in the late ’70s. He named the drink—a layered cocktail containing coffee liqueur, orange liqueur, and Irish Cream—after a New Wave band from the state of Georgia. He concocted all kinds of drinks, all named after his favourite bands, but the B-52 was the only one that became popular.

Get the recipe.

The Raymond Massey

The who? Raymond Massey was a Canadian actor most well-known for playing Abraham Lincoln—he portrayed the man in multiple plays and movies, including Abe Lincoln in Illinois, for which he received an Oscar nomination. The drink is a mix of whiskey and ginger syrup topped with champagne and garnished with lemon peel.

Get the recipe.

The Angry Canadian

Another drink that includes maple syrup, the Angry Canadian is a twist on the Old Fashioned, invented in 2013. It’s a combination of whiskey, bitters, club soda, and, of course, the syrup, which replaces the sugar in a traditional Old Fashioned. Why is it angry? Unclear. Maybe if you drink too many you get riled up.

Get the recipe.

The Donald Sutherland

If you don’t know who Donald Sutherland is, you have no business calling yourself Canadian. Just kidding. But also: watch Six Degrees of Separation. Or Outbreak. Or The Italian Job. Or…tons of other movies. Sutherland is apparently a fan of rye whiskey—this twist on a Rusty Nail includes the spirit.

Get the recipe.

The Sourtoe Cocktail

Okay, so maybe “cocktail” is a misnomer, since this drink, invented in Dawson City, Yukon, is just a shot of whiskey. Oh, with the addition of a preserved human toe. Allegedly, in the ’70s, someone found a jar containing a human toe in a remote Yukon cabin—the toe was left there by a pair of brothers, one of whom had frostbite, so the toe had to come off. And be put in a jar. Obviously. And then the jar-finder decided to make a drink that involved the toe. Because…? Well, Robert Service did say that “there are strange things done in the midnight sun,” so we’ll just go with that.

There is no recipe. It’s whiskey. And a toe.

Categories
Cottage Life

Chicken Bones, the beloved Maritimes treat, is making its way into your cocktails

When most people think about chicken bones, a simmering pot of broth probably comes to mind. But for anyone with a connection to Canada’s Maritime provinces, Chicken Bones are the ultimate wintertime treat. 

First introduced by New Brunswick’s Ganong confectioners in 1885, Chicken Bones are a spicy cinnamon hard candy with a thin chocolate centre. The small pink rectangular treats bear a passing resemblance to their namesake, provided you have a bit of imagination.

 

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No East Coast Christmas table is complete without a cut glass bowl of this candy for snacking and occasionally stirring into hot chocolate. The team at Ganong also suggests adding them to raspberry cheesecake bites and sticky popcorn balls. But another company has come up with a modern twist on this old-fashioned flavour: a liqueur.

Chicken Bones Liqueur is the brainchild of New Brunswick’s Moonshine Creek Distillery. They introduced the candy-inspired spirit (which isn’t affiliated with Ganong) in late 2019 and to say it made a splash would be an understatement—New Brunswickers queued for hours just to get their hands on it. This year, bottles of Chicken Bones Liqueur are making their way across Canada. In fact, you might be offered a dram the next time you visit your cottage neighbours.

Here’s how to enjoy it: it’s lovely in any drink where you’d add a nip or two of Baileys, such as your morning coffee or late-night cocoa. And while it’s a dairy-free product, the spirit is perfect in creamy drinks. “My absolute favourite way to enjoy the Chicken Bones Liqueur is in eggnog. It’s perfect in its simplicity for the holiday season,” says Jeremiah Clark, CEO of Moonshine Creek.

Chicken Bones Liqueur is also very much at home in any recipe that relies on creme de cacao.  According to Jeremiah, a Brandy Alexander is particularly nice when made with Chicken Bones. He suggests a ratio of two ounces of aged brandy, one ounce of Chicken Bones, and one ounce of half-and-half cream. For an extra frothy treat, shake the ingredients without ice and top off the drink with some freshly grated nutmeg. 

However, for those who prefer things a little less creamy, the distillery’s “Dressed To Impress” cocktail will hit a refreshing note. It combines Chicken Bones Liqueur with blood orange juice, egg white, simple syrup, and other spirits for a brunch-friendly libation that would easily convince your friends to help you repair the dock and stain the deck.

Categories
Cottage Life

Drinking glasses you need at the cottage according to a mixologist

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Whether you plan to sit around the fire with an Irish coffee, host an epic meal or simply sip pinor noir solo on the deck, there’s a drinkware option that would likely elevate your experience. We chatted with Mackenzie Putici, a Toronto-based certified sommelier, mixologist, and founder of New World Wine Tours to get a better idea of the drinkware you need for inspired cottage sipping.

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