Two-stage ARC giveaway!

OK- here's my two cents for the random, and I'll see if I can find a worthy dessert recipe to post later! (After I get home to the books...:) )

Not much of a drinker, though Green Tea Muffins strike me as something Lily would enjoy, with some raspberry sauce for dipping.....mmmmmm......

0_o now I'm hungry.

Commenting while I try to think up a dessert for Tybalt...

Ok, I've come to love my catnip tea...especially with a splash of rum or amaretto. It's not exactly a cocktail, but I'd gladly share with Tybalt!

I maintain that Tybalt would drink a catnip *julep*, not a catnip mojito. I posted one before I realized somebody had already done the other, alas. Juleps are made with BOURBON. Which I can totally see Tybalt drinking. However, conceptually too similar. I cede the ground. I WILL JUST HAVE TO GET CREATIVE!!!!

for Tybalt

Royal Claw, or What to Drink When You have Just Successfully Battled All Challengers to your Position as King of the Cat

1 1/2 oz Scotch (I prefer a blended for mixed drink application, personally. Famous Grouse, perhaps.)

1/2 oz Drambuie

1 ounce Goldschlager (make sure you get the sparkly golden bits!!!)

Contents of 2 valarian root herbal supplement pills, broken and stirred in (note that valerian root relaxes people and makes cats hyper. I, uh also don't recommend mixing booze with valerian root in real life--too many downers. However, Tybalt is immortal, so he can take it. I don't think mint would work as well flavor-wise, given the addition of the goldschlager and it's hot cinnamon profile, which is why I subbed the powdered valerian root here--it doesn't taste excessively minty-like dry, unlike catnip--AND as a special bonus, it has a rather musky smell!)

Serve neat.

Would probably also be excellent dropped into a nice, cool Guinness, rather like a "Christmas Pudding" (that's Drambuie, southern comfort and Guinness. Yum!). I mean, except for the whole "Really, seriously, don't actually mix liquor and valerian root" part.

I'm posting this without reading the comments, so I apologize if it's been done before.

Tybalt Julep
You will need: bourbon, sugar, water, fresh catnip, ice. You may either make a simple sugar/water syrup, or use powdered sugar.


1)Bruise the catnip leaves very lightly to help release the oils.

2)Mix the catnip in with your sugar syrup or a mixture of powdered sugar and water to taste.

3 Put the ice into a collins or highball glass, and pour the sugar/catnip mixture over top.

4) Pour bourbon (three ounces, more or less) over top, serve with straw.

Catnip garnish optional.

Tybalt's Toblerone Cheesecake

* 1 cup plain chocolate biscuit crumbs
* 1/4 cup ground almonds or other nut meal
* 80g butter, melted
* 1/2 cup thickened cream plus 1/2 cup for topping, extra
* 1/2 cup caster sugar
* 200g TOBLERONE Milk or Dark Chocolate for topping
* 200g TOBLERONE Milk or Dark Chocolate, melted, cooled
* 2x250g blocks PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened


Combine biscuit crumbs, butter and almonds, press into the base of a lightly greased 20cm springform pan. Chill until filling prepared.

Beat PHILADELPHIA and sugar using an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in the melted Toblerone and cream until well combined.

Pour onto the prepared crumb base and refrigerate 2 to 3 hours until set, or overnight (preferably).

TOPPING:

Warm 1/2 cup heavy cream in a double-boiler (do not boil), and add 200g chopped Toblerone. Stir gently until chocolate has melted and the ganache begins to come together.

Continue mixing until all cream and chocolate is incorporated and mixture is smooth.

Pour/spoon over SET cheesecake, chill 2 hours or until required. Top with a few chocolate curls if desired.

---

The Incapacitated (for those times when alcohol is your weapon-of-choice)

(makes 2 large-4 small - although small kind of defeats the purpose)

2 shots (60ml) Kahlua
2 shots Bailey's
2 shots vodka (vanilla is nice)
2 shots dark Creme de Cacao
2 shots Godiva Chocolate liqueur, or similar
6-8 scoops chocolate, choc-chip ice cream (although any ice cream can be used for variations on the theme - and we have - MY original recipe calls for choc choc-chip)
Heavy cream
Chocolate sauce
Ice
2 chilled brandy balloons or hurricane glasses

Place 1-2 handfuls of ice in blender; measure (no need for absolute precision) over spirits and liqueurs. Splash in some heavy cream and top with ice cream, in small scoops.

Blend very well. Drizzle chocolate sauce around the inside of the glasses; pour in blended drink. Serve with powdered or flaked chocolate on top and a long straw.

Tasty, but will definitely incapacitate in a hurry.

This are a comment.

(Sorry; we've been moving all week in 100-degree weather. I am waaaaaay too fried to play the cocktail game. :( )

Here's my entry for the random drawing. Hopefully I can come up with something good for the contest :)

Home doesn't have a signature drink as such, because the ingredients vary as much as the collection of sullen, partially fae children gathered there. Cheap wine. Vodka that smells suspiciously of rubbing alcohol. A few liters of soda. Extra sugar, to cut the taste. Oranges stolen off an unguarded tree, squeezed in. They'd only go to waste splattered on the street.

It always tastes like freedom.

Hm… I think the Luidaeg would like the Brazilian cocktail Caipirinha. It's cachaça and lime. (I know people from Brazil who don't put sugar in it, regardless of what Wikipedia says.)

It's delicious. A bit sweet and citrus with a smooth hard liquor. :)

Cachaça is hard liquor made from sugar cane, specifically the distilled juice. The name actually means "car crash".

As a cultural note, in Brazil, someone can drink as much caipirinha (the cocktail) as they want and they won't be considered an alcoholic, but anybody who enjoys cachaça straight is automatically considered an alcoholic, even if they never get drunk.

Sylvester is a fatherly figure so I give him my dad's friday night drink : the "Picon bière" (which according to wikipedia doesn't seem to exist much out of France).

So, for Sylvester :
A beer with some Sirop de Picon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirop_de_Picon) in a classy beer glass.

I forgot, very important : Add a slice of lime.

Alas, I am useless in the kitchen, and cannot produce tasty innovation. Nonetheless, here is my Stage One comment. :D

OOh, I forgot about The Bannick.

One part Grey Goose vodka. Goose it with everclear. Shake it with crushed ice, and and a twist of cilantro, because it tastes like soap.

*falls about laughing at the idea that there was ever a possibility of less than five entries*

H'mmmmm. I'm going to have to go away and think about desserts. Possibly something involving spun sugar. All fantastical like.

For Quentin:

1 Tbsp Vanilla syrup
2 Tbsp Rose syrup
1 Tbsp Blackcurrant syrup
1 Tbsp Pomegranate syrup (or 2 tsp Pomegranate mollases)
Juice of one lime

Stir together in a tall glass, add some ice, then add sparkling water until it's more or less full. Stir again. You should end up with something that looks approximately like watered down dried blood, but it tastes good.

I think Toby would be a whiskey drinker. One of the old, peat-flavored varieties.

Or she'd be into Bloody Mary's, but something more exotic, like a Shanghai Mary:

Pint glass of V-8, 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce, dash of ground toasted schezchuan pepper corns, dash of lemon juice, little bit of garlic salt, tiny bit of sirichi sauce for heat. Garnish with a dilly bean, a stalk of bok choi (cut to celery-like proportions, but with the leafy bit still intact) and two marinated garlic cloves (available in asian grocery stores in the refrigerated section). Add a shot of vodka. The vodka could be plain, pepper vodka, or garlic-infused vodka.

Wot, no girly-girl drinks with an umbrella and a full serving of fruit?

Seems to me Toby's had enough experience having to taste other critters' stale blood on the job that she'd pass on any bloody mary drinks...nonetheless, your kitsune variation looks awesome enough that it might tempt even her...

Wheatgrass & Copper

1 old (pre 1980s) penny or core of copper wire.
juice of 1 lime
1 shot wheatgrass juice
1 shot vodka
dash grenadine.

Using tongs, heat penny with a gas burner. Let cool. Place in large shooter glass.
Squeeze lime onto penny, let sit while you squeeze the wheatgrass.
Add wheatgrass. Over back of a spoon float 1oz chilled vodka.
Take a soda straw and fill with exactly enough grenadine to match depth of liquid in shooter glass. Place the straw upright in the middle of the glass and holding the grenadine in with your finger on the end. Remove finger and withdraw straw leaving column of 'blood' in the center of the glass.

NOTE: This really will taste bad. Look awesome tho...

Tobyrita

1oz Tequila
1oz Damiana Liquour (you can substitute tripple-sec if you MUST.)
1oz Wheatgrass Juice
juice of 1 lime

1c Sugar
1/4c kosher salt
1/2 tsp copper nitrate (available in the pool supplies section of a hardware store)

In a mortar-and-pestle combine sugar, salt and copper nitrate. Grind until completely mixed.
Take a sidecar glass, wet rim and coat with sugar/salt/copper mix.
Add other ingredients and ice to shaker, shake and pour into glass.

NOTE: Copper Nitrate is TOXIC. If you make it, omit that ingredient. No, really.

Tybalt.

3oz Snappy Tom tomato juice.
1oz juice from tuna can.
pinch of celery salt
dash of angostura bitters
1 oz Skyy vodka
Garnish with catnip chiffonade.

The Luidaeg

1oz Drambuie
1oz dark rum
4oz strong brewed Russian caravan tea.
Add treacle to taste.

Sylvester

2oz Oban single malt Scotch Whiskey over ice in tumbler. Add dash of bitters.

Rayseline

Fill highball glass half full of ice. Add 2oz Absinthe. Fill rest with Collins Mix.

This contest is awesome! *submits comment for drawing, while admiring the abundant, creative harvest the author has inspired*

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Barely making it in holy shit.

I think that Tybalt would have the following for a dessert. It's nice and simple, creamy but tasty. Perfect for a Cait Sidhe.
Take one banana, starting to get smushy, and put it in a bowl. Smush it with a fork until you have smushy banana paste. Take a carton of half-and-half, and pour it over the banana until you have formed a delicious, delicious lake. Eat with spoon.

Toby strikes me as a chocolate-is-treat kinda person, so I think she'd share with Tybalt, but add chocolate syrup. And maybe they'd both prefer to use Baileys instead of regular cream.