White Christmas

Day 222, Cocktails 218

Friday night turned into home movie night for Gwen and me, with both the daughters out of the house.  We took advantage of the evening by watching one of our favorite Christmas movies – White Christmas with Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen.  Man, can that Vera Ellen dance!  We also love all the cocktail lounges that are part of the movie and how the women wear cocktail dresses and the men suits.  I swear that I should have turned 30 in about 1952!

When watching a movie like this we like to sip cocktails ourselves.  I wanted to stay within my sour theme of the moment and also wanted to create a cocktail that would be emblematic of White Christmas.  So, down to the Twilight Lounge I went and started tinkering.  This is what I came up with:

  White Christmas

• 2 oz Death’s Door gin
• 3/4 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz bar syrup
• 1/2 bar spoon peppermint schnapps

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake, shake, shake to mix and chill.  Strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with 3 fresh cranberries.

This was delicious!  Using the shaker and really shaking vigourously left bits of ice that came through the strainer and helped froth up the cocktail a bit.  This gives the drink a very nice, white, almost snowy appearance.  I did have to be careful with the peppermint schnapps to be sure not to overpower the gin and lemon juice with it.  Too much and it just takes over!  You can, however, adjust the amount of schnapps to your taste.  For instance, I do like mine just a bit more minty than Gwen did.  The Death’s Door gin is a local product made from wheat and juniper berries grown on Washington Island.  It’s not quite as strong on the flavor as a typical London dry gin.  If you don’t have Death’s Door in your area I would substitute Plymouth in its place.

With our cocktails in hand we settled in for the movie and had a fun evening!

Cheers!