Simple Goodness Sisters Recipes

The Cranberry Mule: a recipe for the holidays

January 09, 2019

The holidays, or any old Thursday, are the perfect time to make this easy to please, quick for a crowd, delicious mule. We love to whip one of these up after a holiday feast because we are terrified of waste and love the thrill (seriously, thrill!) or using up every leftover in the fridge in our own at home version of Food Network's show "Chopped", and this craft cocktail recipe is an excellent way to use up leftover cranberry sauce, jelly, or chutney from the holidays, but the drink is equally tasty any winter's day.

As our Christmas gift to the interwebs, you can watch us make this cocktail on our newly dusted off Youtube channel here! We're excited to be putting out recipe into video form as a fun way to share our love for garden to glass cocktails. We've been sharing recipes weekly with our instagram live followers and are now excited that everyone on the world wide web, including our blog subscribers (Join us, please!) will be able to watch us make cocktails on the farm, through youtube.

While you are watching, please keep in mind that we are very new to these videos and are making a very valiant effort to make these things shorter (haha!), but are fighting our strong nature of loving to hear ourselves talk and our complete inability to stay on course of a topic. We're sisters, and we have a lot to say/disagree about, and we're naturally loquacious!

These Cranberry Mule Cocktails are an absolute breeze to put together so they're also perfect for those unexpected guests that tend to join your table during the holidays (some hate it, we tend to love it.) All of that said, our holidays were SO very busy and our unexpected guest count SO very frequently high (really, we will use any excuse to procrastinate...) that we're just getting around to blogging about these cranberry mule cocktails now, in the first week of January.

Maybe you have a few extra cans of cranberry sauce haunting your pantry cupboards after every one of your family members thought to bring an extra "just in case." Maybe, since it is January, and everyone is watching that Marie Kondo chick tidy up the world on Netflix and becoming obsessed with purging their own excessive household items (us included!), you want a reason to use up those cranberry cans.

Or maybe not- so let me say it again- you can make these anytime. Cranberry Mules are the perfect cold winter cocktail for when you grow tired of hot buttered rums and ski slopes and just want something refreshing to sip on wile you play board games and finish puzzles. Because that's what you do in winter, right? Never endless piles of laundry or fence fixing in high winds, you sit around and drink cocktails and do puzzles. Right.

Thanksgiving Mule, a craft cocktail recipe

Note: a mule is a cocktail recipe featuring a combination of a base spirit (vodka for this one) and ginger beer, with a citrus component.

1 tablespoon leftover canned cranberry sauce or your own homemade cranberry chutney
2 dashes cardamom bitters like Scrappy's or the Bitter Housewife
1 lime wedge
3 ounces of high quality ginger beer such as Timber City Ginger Beer
1.5 ounces of voda like Heritage Distilling Batch 12 vodka

Muddle the cranberry sauce and cardamom bitters at the bottom of a glass (an Old Fashioned glass is fine, or a copper mug is preferred.) Add enough ice to fill the glass. Pour in vodka, followed by ginger beer, stir to combine. Squeeze in a wedge of lime over the glass, and garnish the glass with a lime wheel and frosted cranberries on a toothpick.

Happy drinking, friends! Please continue to tag us on Instagram and facebook when you make these so we can see your results! And if you are a blogger and want to collaborate, please let us know.

We can’t wait to see what you’re making with SGS syrups.Haven’t bought yours yet? Follow this link to our shop!

The Fireside Sipper you Need to Make Tonight: the Simple Goodness Sisters Old Fashioned

October 15, 2018

Need the perfect Fall drink for comfy chair snuggling, cozy sweater wearing, great book reading, nights by the fire?

Of course you do. We all do. That's what Fall is all about, Charlie Brown. And I've got the recipe - and the simple syrup!- for you!You'll need Huckleberry Spruce Tip syrup, so to make that happen!

Old Fashioned are like a warm hug, and Simple Goodness Old Fashioneds extra good.

In my recipe, the Simple Goodness Sisters simple syrup () takes the place of the classic sugar cube to add sweetness and mellow out the whiskey. Try the recipe with Rhubarb Vanilla Bean, for a tart-sweet punch, where the vanilla complements the caramelly toast flavors of bourbon aged in oak barrels. We also love it with the Lemon Herb paired with a sharp, bright 100% rye whiskey- super unique with the herbal back notes! The only recipe we haven't tried with it is the Marionberry Mint, since the mint would overwhelm the bitters and orange twist and turn it into more of a Julep variation (a bourbon, fresh mint, and sugar cube cocktail enjoyed at the Kentucky Derby.)Make an Old Fashioned today using your , take a photo, then tag us on social media so we can see your syrup + spirit combo! Now with that out of the way, now lift your glass, and cheers to slower times and slower sipping!

WHY IT’S GREAT: A COZY AND SLOW SIPPING ODE TO SUMMER'S END

glass: heavy rocks glass

ingredients:

2 ounces Batch 206 Old Log Cabin Bourbon or, depending on your tastes and the syrup you're using, experiment with rye whiskey or a blended whiskey
1 barspoon Rhubarb Vanilla Bean, Huckleberry Spruce Tip, Lemon Herb, or other Simple Goodness Sisters syrup
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 dash citrus bitters (we make ours, but bitterhousewife has a good one too)
light splash of club soda optional
ice (use a large square cube mold or just a single cube of ice)
orange twist
optional garnishes-edible flowers, cinnamon stick

How to make it: In a heavy bottom rocks glass, dash the bitters to the bottom of the glass. Add a barspoon of simple syrup and stir. Add your ice cube and pour the 2 ounces of whiskey over the top of the cube. Give one gentle swirl to the drink. Add a splash of club soda, if desired, and the take your citrus twist (a skinny section of citrus peel that has been carefully shaved off the fruit without removing the white part or "pith", as this part brings bitterness to the drink.) Rub the twist along the inside of the glass rim, and then hold both ends in your fingers and give it one counter clockwise turn over the top of the glass. Curl the ends to a spiral and drop it in the glass. Happy drinking, friends! Please continue to tag and when you use your Simple Goodness Syrups! #happierhour And if you are a blogger and want to collaborate, please let us know. We can’t wait to see what delicious-ness you’re mixing up with SGS syrups! Haven’t bought yours yet? Follow this link to ! Remember, these make awesome, stress-free but thoughtful gifts for teachers, neighbors, employees, holiday hosts, friends, and family! And, ahem....your own stocking!

Marionberry Mint Syrup

Farewell to August Cocktail: A Marionberry Mint Simple Goodness Syrup recipe

August 23, 2018

August is waning but my thirst for a craft cocktail shared with friends isn't.

Once my mid-August birthday rounds the bend, I know summer is coming to an end. My birthday typically coincides with the Perseif meteor showers, the hottest days of the summer, and lots of days on the lake. Recently, the Pacific Northwest has seen so much summer smoke from wildfires that August has been far less enjoyable than the long, hot, lazy days of my summers' past, and some Seattlites with hazy eyes and burning throats are praying for rain and pinning pumpkin recipes on pinterest. But not me. I believe every season is owed its time to be. The good, the bad, the stressful, the smokey, I want to experience them all.

And so, while I am tempted daily to count down the remaining Happy Camper Cocktails events, say farewell to my perma-to do list and thick smokescreen outside, and look forward to the slower days ahead, I try to stay in the moment. I enjoy my garden and my (finally) ripening tomatoes. I enjoy the sight of my children's naked limbs as they run through the backyard pool or sprinkler, joyful and wild. I tell myself to enjoy the process of each week, and the learning curve. I am learning to maximize efficiency, minimize anxiety, little by little as I navigate my growing cocktail catering business and maintain my mom status.

At present, the moment is spent inside, due to the aforementioned smoke filtering our August sun, but still. I find enjoyment, wherever I can, every day. I make myself one of these drinks, and I say cheers to a good summer. It's been a summer of growth for all of us, my children's long limbs included, and I'm not quite ready to say Farewell to August.

FAREWELL TO AUGUST cocktail

WHY IT’S GREAT: A REFRESHING, PACIFIC NORTHWESTERN ALTERNATIVE TO THE BORING VODKA SODA

Glass: rocks glass, stemless wine glass, cocktail glass or juice glass- just don't let it get too tall

Ingredients:

1.5 ounces vodka
.25 ounces Simple Goodness Sisters’ Marionberry Mint syrup
2 ounces club soda
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
ice (crush it if you feel like it)
3 blackberries speared on a toothpick and a sprig of mint, optional but pretty!

How to make it: combine all ingredients except for the club soda in a cocktail shaker halfway full of ice and shake for 10 seconds. Pour contents into a fresh glass of ice and garnish. That is it! Fast, fresh, and easy to batch (make multiples of) for a crowd.

Happy drinking, friends! Please continue to tag us on Instagram and facebook when you receive your first bottles! And if you are a blogger and want to collaborate, please let us know. We can’t wait to see what you’re making with SGS syrups.Haven't bought yours yet? Follow this link to our shop! Remember, these make awesome, stress-free but thoughtful gifts for teachers, neighbors, employees, holiday hosts, friends, and family!

photo by Kerry Jeanne photography

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