Rosy and delicious: the Secret Crush Champagne cocktail. Photo courtesy Macao Trading Co.
Here’s a Valentine’s Day version of a Champagne Cocktail.
Called a Secret Crush, it’s a rosy color from the addition of grenadine—a red syrup originally made from pomegranate juice or cherry juice, and sugar. (Grenade is the French word for pomegranate as well as grenade.)
Today, supermarket brands are made of artificial ingredients; but you can find authentic artisan brands:
Stirrings Authentic Grenadine, made with pomegranate juice, is all-natural as well as far more flavorful than the red-colored corn syrup. Monin also makes an all-natural grenadine. Natural brands also include spices, such as cardamom and clove.
You can make this cocktail with Champagne or Prosecco, a sparking wine from Italy that’s lighter and more affordable.
Thanks to New York City’s restaurant hot spot Macao Trading Co. for the recipe.
Preparation
1. Pour half of the amount of the sparkling wine into the Champagne flute.
2. Place the sugar cube on a bar spoon and saturate it with Angostura bitters.
3. Carefully place the bitters-saturated sugar cube into the flute. Let rest for a moment.
4. Add grenadine. Top off with the rest of the sparkling wine.
5. Twist the lemon twist over the drink and discard.
Bitters, by the way, are a strongly-flavored distillation or infusion of aromatic herbs, bark, fruit and/or roots. The term derives from the fact that the recipe contains no sweetener. While artisan brands contain a blend of flavors—angostura bark, cascarilla, cassia, gentian, orange peel and quinine, for example—the best-known commercial brand, Angostura, is made primarily from the roof of gentian, a flower. If you have artisan bitters, substitute them for the Angostura brand specified in the recipe.
The BitterSweets Dysfunctional Collection.
Photo courtesy Despair.com.
Forget those happy Valentine candy hearts—called Sweetheart Conversation Hearts—with their positive messages: Love You, Be Mine and so on.
Despair.com has candy hearts for those who are not in the Valentine spirit.
Choose from three different collections of BitterSweets: Dejected, Dumped and Dysfunctional.
Each box contains 37 brutal kissoffs. The Dumped collection, for example, offers U LEFT SEATUP, BACK 2 KENNEL, I GOT SOBER, CELIB8 THX2U and CALL A 900#.
Six ounces in a heart-shaped tin is $9.95.
SWEETHEARTS HISTORYSweethearts Conversation Hearts, those ubiquitous pastel sugar losenges, have been made by the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO), since the Civil War. The company manufactures more than 8 billion hearts annually.The first versions were made in the shape of a cockle shell. Mottoes printed on thin colored paper were rolled up inside. Sometime in the 1860s, the company devised a machine with a die that printed the words on the lozenge paste. The present design dates to 1902.
Messages included All Mine, Angel, Let’s Kiss, Love, Lover Boy, My Baby and Sweet Talk, among others. Beginning in the early 1990s, the sayings were updated annually. “Call Me” became “Fax Me.” (Hey, what about Text Me?)
The line now includes chocolate, Spanish and sugar-free versions.
You don’t need the time or rose-piping skills to make a special cake for Valentine’s Day.
Start with a plain iced cake from your favorite bakery, and add your own touches.
First, remove any plastic rose or other mundane decoration that may come with the cake. Then, depending on what treats your sweetie or family prefer, consider:
Crushed red and white peppermints
Red, pink and white Jelly Belly jelly beans mix, M&Ms mix, gum drops
Small chocolate hearts or white chocolate hearts
Fresh raspberries or whole or sliced strawberries
Small strawberries half-dipped in melted chocolate
Rose petals (wash to remove pesticides or buy organic flowers)
Anything that appeals to you in the candy store
Buy an iced chocolate cake—a round
cake is just fine—and top with chocolate
truffles and/or malted milk balls. Photo
courtesy Wilton.com, which has lots of cake ideas.
Consider edging the top rim of the cake with one type of garnish and placing a large item in the center: a larger chocolate or chocolate marshmallow heart, an entire blossom or a trio of large strawberries, for example.
Still thinking about what to serve on Valentine’s Day? Much of what you decide to make can be accented with red grapefruit segments.
Red grapefruit is a mutation of a pink grapefruit discovered in the 1920s. (Pink grapefruit itself is a mutation that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.)
As pink grapefruit is typically sweeter than white grapefruit, red grapefruit is even sweeter. Red grapefruit can be found under the brand names Rio Red, Rio Star, Ruby Red and Ruby Sweet.
The rich red color of red grapefruit is due to lycopene, a powerful carotenoid phytonutrient (antioxidant) that appears to fight tumor growth. Lycopene exists to a lesser extent in pink grapefruit.
