Gascon Smash

Lately I’ve been mixing with armagnac, cognac’s lesser known cousin. Armagnac and cognac are both distilled from grapes, but unlike cognac which is twice distilled in pot stills, armagnac is typically distilled only once in column stills, which results in a different flavor profile. Whereas cognac is smooth and refined, armagnac has a lot more character and roughness which makes it very interesting in cocktails.

So for this month’s Mixology Monday Smash Challenge, I decided to use armagnac as the base spirit. It’s also fitting that, historically, smashes used to be made with brandy before whiskey smashes became more popular. My inspiration for the drink was a traditional French pairing, plum and armagnac. In France you often see a simple dessert of Agen pruneaux (dried plums) with armagnac. Armagnac and the best prunes come from Gascony in southwestern France, so it’s only natural to serve them together.

Plums are in season and I had on hand a variety of pluot (Flavor King, a plum-apricot hybrid) from Frog Hollow Farm that I decided to incorporate in the cocktail. They are very sweet and have a slight acidic bite. To reinforce the plum flavor, I also used some plum eau-de-vie. Combining armagnac with the eau-de-vie gave depth to the cocktail. I added a touch of lemon juice for acidity. The plums were quite sweet so I did not have to add sugar or simple syrup. I garnished the drink with a slice of fresh plum and a couple of brandied cherries, plus fresh mint from my patio.

Boozy ice cream

It’s great to make ice cream at home, but unless you have professional equipment or a tank of liquid nitrogen on hand, the consistency is usually on the hard side. One easy way to remedy this is to add booze to your ice cream. Some recipes recommend adding a small amount of neutral-tasting vodka. For fruit-based recipes, macerating fruit in kirsch is an excellent solution as it enhances the taste of the fruit, similar to what you would do for a fruit salad. By why not make the booze front and center?

Years ago I started using the Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. Their ice cream base #1 is as simple as it gets, requiring no cooking whatsoever, and just four ingredients: eggs, sugar, heavy cream, and milk. The book contains a variation with kahlua and amaretto, but that never particularly appealed to me. However I had this idea to make a Calvados ice cream – why not, good Calvados is delicious, like apples in liquor form. The only difficult part is to accept the idea to part with 1/2 cup (4 oz, 110 mL) of Calvados which equates to a non negligible 16% of an entire bottle… But it’s worth it and the ice cream keeps for a while (in theory – it will be gone before you know it). You can use it on a pound cake as pictured below, or even better on an apple tart. The cream smoothes the Calvados and the fat in the ice cream allows to better enjoy the aromatics (at least that is what I tell myself after a couple of generous scoops).