HIRAM WALKER RAZZ ATTACK RASPBERRY SCHNAPPS

To make this delicious raspberry schnapps you’ll need to track down the raspberry flavoring syrup used in coffeehouses with the brand name Torani. A few of the more popular flavors, raspberry included, are now available in most supermarkets.

1 cup very hot water
cup sugar
1 cup 80-proof vodka
½ cup Torani raspberry flavoring
syrup

1. Dissolve the sugar in the hot water.

2. Add vodka and flavoring syrup and stir well. Store in a covered container.

MAKES 2110CUPS.

KAHLÚA COFFEE LIQUEUR

Kahlúa may market itself as the coffee liqueur developed in Mexico, but many believe the brand originated in Turkey. Looking at the label, we can still see an Arabic archway under which a sombrero-wearing man rests. Old labels of the brand show this man wearing a turban and smoking a pipe. Even the name Kahlúa is of Arabic origin. Regardless of where the drink came from, it dominates all other coffee liqueurs out there, including the very popular Tia Maria.

Here’s a greatly improved version of the clone recipe that appears in Top Secret Recipes. You’ll find this recipe is easier to make, tastes better, and, just as with the first recipe, improves with age.

1 cup light corn syrup
½ cup granulated sugar
5 teaspoons instant coffee
½ cup hot water
1cups vodka
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Combine corn syrup, sugar, and instant coffee with hot water in a medium pitcher or large jar. Stir or shake until sugar has dissolved.

2. Add vodka and vanilla extract and stir well. Store in a covered container.

• MAKES 3 CUPS.

Schnapps & Liqueurs

Liqueur-making dates back to somewhere around 900 A.D., when Arabs and European monks had to do something to break up the boredom of living in 900 A.D. Think about it: no DVDs, no video games, no extreme sports on ESPN2. These guys had nothing better to do than spend their time crafting the perfect beverage on which to get wasted. I respectfully toast their devotion.

Luckily for us, creating liqueurs at home today is a much simpler task than in those days thanks to the availability of a variety of extracts and flavorings, and pre-distilled spirits. This leaves us plenty of time in one day to both make liqueur and watch a DVD.

These clone recipes are very easy. For most of them it’s a simple matter of creating a simple syrup, then adding 80-proof vodka and the correct flavoring. Vodka works well because of its neutral flavor. You can use any inexpensive vodka you like, but I recommend Smirnoff. That’s the brand I used to make these clones, since it tastes good without being too expensive. For the flavorings and extracts, try to use Schilling or McCormick brand.

Each of the recipes has been designed to create a finished product with the same approximate alcohol content as the original.

For the liqueurs with fruit additives or cocoa you will want to strain the liqueur to remove the sediment. For this, use a wire strainer that has been lined with a coffee filter or two, or a paper towel. Moisten the filters with a bit of water first, then, after the liqueur has aged a while, pour it in and let it drip through the filter. If the liqueur has settled for several days the sediment will be on the bottom of your bottle or jar, so if you pour carefully most of the solid material will stay behind. It may take several hours for all of the liqueur to drip through the filter.

Store your finished product in a tightly sealed bottle in a cool, dry place. Except for the Irish cream clone, your finished product will store indefinitely, and even improve with age.

Berry Banana

With strawberry ice cream topping, banana, and crumbled Vienna Fingers you can’t go wrong.

1 ripe banana
2 Vienna Fingers cookies
2½ cups vanilla ice cream
¼ cup milk
¼ cup strawberry topping

1. Before you start to make this clone, freeze a medium glass or ceramic bowl in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.

2. Mash the banana in a separate small bowl.

3. Crumble the Vienna Fingers into small pieces.

4. Measure the ice cream and milk into the frozen bowl. Stir with a spoon until smooth and creamy.

5. Add the banana, Vienna Fingers, and strawberries to the ice cream and stir to combine.

6. Pour into a 20-ounce glass and serve with a long spoon.

• MAKES 1 20-OUNCE SERVING.

Dairy Queen Blizzard

It’s Dairy Queen’s most successful product ever. Over 175 million Blizzards were sold in the year following the product’s debut in 1985. Such a sales phenomenon was the new creation that other fast food chains invented their own versions of the soft-serve ice cream treats with mixed in chunks of cookies and candies and fruit. McDonald’s McFlurry is one popular example. Today there are over a dozen varieties of the frozen treat to choose from at Dairy Queen, and I’ve got all of the most creative and tasty versions cloned right here. Even though Oreo Cookie, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Butterfinger, and M&M’s are four of the top five most-requested varieties at Dairy Queen, I’ve left those versions out of this section, and included them instead in the McFlurry clones on pages 65-67.

The biggest challenge we face when making our Blizzard replicas at home is keeping the ice cream from going all soft and runny on us when the other ingredients are stirred in. To solve that problem, we’ll use a special technique inspired by marble slab ice cream stores.These outfits mix your choice of chunky ingredients with your choice of ice cream on a slab of frozen stone.This method keeps the ice cream cold and firm while mixing, until it’s served to a drooling you.

To incorporate this technique at home you need to put a glass or ceramic bowl in the freezer for at least 30 minutes (while you’re at it you may also want to freeze the glass you’re going to serve the thing in).An hour or more is even better.Then, we simply mix our ingredients in the icy bowl, while the ice cream stays frosty cold. Just be sure to use plain vanilla ice cream (not French vanilla) for these clones, if you have a choice.

SONIC DRIVE-IN CHERRY LIMEADE

Here’s the signature drink from the chain that’s reviving the drive-in burger joint, just like a scene out of American Graffiti or Happy Days.

It was in 1953 that Troy Smith obtained the parcel of land in Shawnee, Oklahoma, that was big enough to fit the new steakhouse and root beer stand that was his dream.Troy thought he’d make the steakhouse his primary operation, but as it turned out folks preferred the hot dogs and cold drinks over at the root beer stand. So Troy did the smart thing and ditched the steakhouse to focus all his efforts on the other joint. At first he called the root beer stand “Top Hat,” but when Troy found out later that name was already being used, he came up with “Sonic” to signify “service at the speed of sound.” Today the chain is the sixth-largest hamburger outlet in the country.

This recipe makes a simple, old-fashioned drink by combining Sprite with cherry juice and some lime wedges. Use cherry juice made by Libby under the brand name Juicy Juice for the best clone.

12 ounces cold Sprite (1 can)
3 lime wedges (⅛ of a lime each)
¼ cup cherry juice (Libby’s Juicy
Juice is best)

1. Fill a 16-ounce glass013 full with ice.

2. Pour Sprite over the ice.

3. Add the juice of three lime wedges and drop them into the drink.

4. Add the cherry juice and serve with a straw.

• MAKES 1 16-OUNCE DRINK (MEDIUM SIZE).

SONIC DRIVE-IN OCEAN WATER

Any Sonic Drive-In regular knows the four or five unique fountain drink favorites on the menu. There’s the Limeade, the Diet Limeade, Strawberry Limeade, and, of course, the Cherry Limeade. But that bright blue stuff called Ocean Water has become a recent favorite for anyone who digs the taste of coconut—it’s like a pina colada soda. The server simply squirts a bit of blue coconut-flavored syrup into a cup of cold Sprite.The big secret to duplicating this one at home is re-creating that syrup, so that’s the first step. After that’s done, you make the drink as they do at the restaurant in less time than it takes to say, “Does my blue tongue clash with what I’m wearing?”

3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon imitation coconut
extract
2 drops blue food coloring
2 12-ounce cans cold Sprite
ice

1. Combine the water and the sugar in a small bowl. Microwave for 30 to 45 seconds, and then stir to dissolve all of the sugar. Allow this syrup to cool.

2. Add coconut extract and food coloring to the cooled syrup. Stir well.

3. Combine the syrup with two 12-ounce cans of cold Sprite. Divide and pour over ice. Add straws and serve.

• MAKES 2 12-OUNCE SERVINGS.

Sodas

When America figured out how to mix carbon dioxide gas with water in the early 1800s a monumental industry was born. The fizzy fluid, invented to clone carbonated water found in natural springs, was originally thought to be a magical curative for a variety of ailments ranging from indigestion to arthritis. Ambitious pharmacists looking to strike it rich with their own new “patent medicines” added custom mixtures of herbs, flowers, fruits, berries, and bark to the soda water, creating a wide range of flavors with a variety of claimed health benefits.Their background in medicine and chemistry made these pharmacists perfectly suited for such a task, despite the many dubious claims of miracle cures provided by the new formulas. It is these pharmacists who are responsible for launching today’s monumental soft drink industry.

Since alcoholic drinks are called “hard drinks,” the new beverages became “soft drinks.” But they were more than just bubbling thirst quenchers, since soft drinks in this era had some potent medicinal ingredients: Coca-Cola contained cocaine extracted from coca leaves to provide energy; Pespi-Cola contained pepsin, an enzyme to aid in digestion; and 7UP came packed with lithium, used today to treat depression and mental illness.

Through the end of the 1800s and into the twentieth century, customers stopped in at soda fountains at their local pharmacies for a dose of chat, refreshment, and remedy, and walked out with a great big smile. It’s no wonder these stores became the central attraction in town. At the soda fountain, when a soft drink was ordered, sweetened syrup was added to cold soda water, it was stirred up a bit and served ready to drink. In the early days of these soda fountains ice cream sodas were hugely popular, as were root beer, ginger ale, and a whole mess of different cola drinks.

Still, the soda business was limited by the fact that customers needed access to a pharmacy. For soda pioneers to make their products fly high they had to figure out how to go from getting the people to the soda, to getting the soda to the people.At first, glass bottles blown by hand were filled with the drink and capped with corks. But pressure from the carbonation was too much for the early stoppers, and many bottles blew their tops before arriving at their destinations. Inventors racked their brains for years to figure out a design for the perfect stopper until, 1500 patents later, the crown bottle cap was invented in 1892. The glass bottle-blowing machine followed the crown cap a few years after that, and the soda distribution industry popped into high gear.

When Prohibition made it illegal to drink the hard stuff, soda sales skyrocketed. Bars that used to serve real beer had to substitute root beer when liquor-free drinks became the legal alternative to booze. As an added bonus, many of the soda brands were used as underground mixers in illegal drinking parties. Ginger ale was a very fashionable mixer in the 20s, as was 7UP, which was invented during Prohibition. So popular in cocktails was that particular lemon-lime soda that when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, 7UP was heavily marketed as a mixer.

During Prohibition convenience drove the soda industry. Vending machines were created that dispensed sodas into a cup so that workers could get their brand-name refreshment on the job, and six-pack cartons made it easy to carry home several bottles of soda at once.Thirsty consumers were bombarded with a variety of new flavors, and as the country was about to go to war, metal cans were introduced. Metal cans were lighter and more durable than bottles, but at that time the metal was more costly than glass, plus it made the drinks taste funny.

The can problems were fixed after the war, and in 1957 the first lightweight aluminum cans were used to package sodas. It took old customers some time to adjust to the new metal containers, but today more sodas are sold in cans than any other way. The plastic bottles introduced in the 70s are now the second most common package for sodas, with glass bottles practically fading into obscurity.

These days the cocaine is gone from Coke, Pespi is pepsin-free, and 7UP comes without the attitude-adjusting benefits of lithium. When we drink these drinks today it’s usually because we’re thirsty. Or we need to get kicked up a notch by the caffeine that’s still added to several brands. Whatever the motivation, Joe Average American will knock back over 50 gallons of soda this year, all by himself. With more than 450 different varieties now competing for attention, it’s no wonder soft drink ads are everywhere we turn.

Shakes

To make a milk shake you must use ice cream. I don’t care what they say in Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts where a milk shake is just milk shaken up with flavored syrup. To those folks, when you add ice cream it’s called a cabinet. And I don’t care what they say in other parts of New England where milk shakes are called velvets or frappes. A milk shake, according to the ultimate food reference guide, Food Lover’s Companion, “consists of a blended combination of milk, ice cream, and flavored syrup, fruit or other flavorings.”

Milk shakes became very popular in the 40s and 50s when machines were developed to dispense a perfectly frozen creamy product. Busy soda fountains and drive-in restaurants welcomed the extra convenience and consistency offered by these handy machines. Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald’s a household name, was once the exclusive distributor of a milk shake machine called the Multimixer. While on his route he heard about a thriving hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California, that was using a row of eight Multimixers at a time to serve lines of people. His initial pitch to the McDonald brothers for franchise rights was motivated by his dream of selling each new store a bunch of these milk shake machines.

In the last decade or so the most popular milk shakes are more than just thin, lightly colored desserts served with a straw. With the success of Dairy Queen’s Blizzard, milk shakes have become much thicker and chunkier. Bits of fruit, candy, cookies, and cereal are added to the mix, making for a treat that can no longer be sucked through a straw without collapsing a lung.

The beauty of all these excellent desserts-in-a-cup is that they can be re-created at home without having to go out and get a Multimixer. For most of them, just get out the blender. For the thicker, chunkier shakes (such as the Blizzard and McFlurry clones), you won’t even need a blender. Instead you’ll use a custom technique developed for this book that incorporates a frozen glass or ceramic bowl. When the ice cream is mixed with milk and other ingredients in the frozen bowl, the ice cream won’t melt, creating a thick and creamy finished product that will hold up a spoon.

French 75 Number 1

While Champagne and other sparkling wines are perfect on their own, especially when toasting those special occasions, they also pair well with other carefully chosen ingredients.

Fizzy, nonalcoholic mixers like ginger ale or ginger beer turn a pour of vodka into a cocktail. It’s up to you whether to use that special bottle of French Champagne with a capital C when mixing cocktails, but we find that sparkling wines from California, Spain, and elsewhere are more than just fine.What will they wear tonight? What will they order? We often traveled with our aunts as young girls and we thought a fancy hotel bar was a mysterious and wonderful place. If we “behaved,” we were allowed to go along. At least before dinner. A French 75, she ordered.

The drink was a bubbling golden liquid in a tall Champagne fl ute refl ecting the red cherry and looked like a mini fountain with an endless flow of bubbles. Wow, we thought, she looked glamorous and happy drinking it—and so very sophisticated.
Named for a powerful but reputedly very smooth French 75 millimeter cannon that was said to have helped win World War I, this drink could be used as a weapon of war—or love. This version uses Cognac instead of the gin that is popular in New Orleans establishments.
Makes 1 cocktail
1 ounce Cognac
¾ ounce Simple Syrup (page 139)
½ ounce fresh lemon juice
½ to 1 ounce Champagne
Fill a Champagne glass with ice and set aside. In a cocktail shaker, combine the Cognac, simple syrup, and lemon juice and shake vigorously. Discard the ice from the glass, strain the mixture into the prepared glass, and fill to the top with Champagne. Serve immediately.

Pegu Club Cocktail

T his cocktail was a 1900s invention of the Pegu Club in the then British colony of Burma. When Audrey Saunders opened her own smashing bar in New York in 2005 and named it the Pegu Club, we thought we had better try that drink.

We marveled at Audrey’s deft hand in remaking New York’s famed Bemelmans Bar a few years before, having been longtime fans of both Bemelmans and the adjacent Café Carlyle. We read about Audrey’s legendary intensity, her drive to get each cocktail right and to understand and respect its history and derivation. To prove this point we spent hours late one night with Audrey and Dale and Jill DeGroff tasting
Ramos Gin Fizz after Ramos Gin Fizz because she wanted to know how we New Orleans restaurant brats remembered it. At today’s Pegu Club, there are house-made bitters on the bar with various people’s names on them. This is a place with dedicated cocktail aficionados and damn good drinks.

Makes 1 cocktail
2 ounces Tanqueray gin
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
¾ ounce Marie Brizard orange curaçao
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters

Fill a Martini glass with ice. Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker fi lled with ice and shake vigorously.

Strain the cocktail into the chilled Martini glass. Serve immediately.

Between the Sheets

F ollow me to Nick’s” is a saying familiar to New Orleanians of all ages. Nick Castrogiovanni’s Big Train Bar was a serious dive even by New Orleans standards. Each successive generation, including ours, thought they discovered it, and were always surprised to learn that their parents had been there before them.

We grew up with thirteen first cousins and gaggles of friends during a glorious time in New Orleans history. We behaved badly—and we mean that as the highest compliment. We have many blurry memories of drinking Between the Sheets, always popular at Nick’s, as a rite of passage during our unsophisticated early adulthood.

Makes 1 cocktail
2 tablespoons superfi ne sugar
1 lemon wedge
1 ounce brandy
1 ounce dark rum, such as Appleton
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
¾ ounce triple sec

Place the sugar in a shallow dish or saucer. Wet half of the outside rim of a rocks glass with the lemon wedge, then dip into the sugar. Fill the glass with ice and set aside. Combine the brandy, rum, lemon juice, and triple sec in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain the mixture into the prepared glass and serve immediately.