Grapefruit Old Fashioned

This is definitely my new favorite mixed drink.  It combines (one of) my favorite fruit(s) with my favorite smelling alcohol, and is beautiful and refreshing.  I made an entire punch bowl of it for a party, and the ladle was scraping the bottom of the bowl by the end of the night.  Everyone loved it.

I stumbled across the recipe over at one of my favorite food blogs, A Cozy Kitchen.  Adrianna is always posting delicious and beautiful looking food, desserts and drinks.  And every so often I just can't resist trying out one of her recipes.  This was one of those times.

My camera has been acting up, so unfortunately these photos are straight off my phone... hopefully I'll be back to better pictures soon.

Ingredients
makes 4 cocktails
for the sage syrup:
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
3-4 sprig fresh sage

for the drink:
4 ruby red grapefruits (fresh squeezed is worth it!)
Angostura bitters
Bourbon of choic
Sage syrup
Sparkling water
Ice

Procedure
In a saucepan over medium heat, add the water and sugar; stirring until sugar dissolves. Add the sprigs of sage and bring the mixture to a simmer, cooking for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow the syrup to steep while you compile the rest of the drink, about 10 minutes. After it’s done steeping, remove the sprigs of sage and discard.

Before you juice the grapefruits, slice off four grapefruit rings for garnish. Juice the grapefruit juice into a measuring cup.  Feel free to strain the grapefruit juice, if it's too pulpy for you.  I ended up straining about half of it, and leaving the other half with all it's pulp.

To build the cocktail, add about 4 liquid ounces of grapefruit juice and two tablespoons of the sage simple syrup to a glass. Add two dashes of bitters, 2 liquid ounces bourbon, a splash of sparkling water and ice. Stir until combined, and garnish with the grapefruit peel. Repeat the process until all the other cocktails are assembled.

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Berry Mascarpone Cream Tart

I've put off posting this for far too long.  Mostly because the task of actually writing out the recipe has just been too daunting.  But it was far to delicious and memorable not to post here, so I'm going to give the most brief recipe possible (sorry!).  I found the recipe over at Apt. 2B Baking Co. and it looked like exactly what I was craving.  Something sweet, but light and fruity.  And beautiful.  Yossy's photographs of her tart are absolutely gorgeous.  Carsten keeps telling me I should take some food photography lessons, or at least read a few books about it.  Maybe I should give it some more thought...

Anyway, I made this tart for Ana's birthday.  I didn't use the crust from the recipe, because I had a left over pie crust in my freezer.  My crust was extremely crispy and flaky, (baked in a buttery flaky crust!), but probably completely different than the shortbread crust in the recipe.  In other words, make this tart in whatever crust you want, and it will be delicious!

So, instead of writing out the entire recipe, I'll just direct you here.

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