Champagne Cocktail Recipes | MIMOSA MADNESS

Welcome to Savage Kitchen. Today we are going to be preparing a mimosa bar for Mother's Day. I have a lot of different ideas about mimosas. The old standby of orange juice and champagne, it's hard to go wrong, but if you've been watching me for a while, you know I like to try different things. So we're going to play with some ingredients and some different flavor combinations. Now a couple of tips about mimosas in general and mimosa bars in general. More than anything else, if you are going to set out a mimosa bar, make sure you put everything in ice. The key to a great mimosa is it needs to be extremely cold. Nobody likes warm champagne. It's a bad idea, trust. My second tip for you is actually about the champagne or cava or prosecco or whatever you're using. Now oftentimes people say it doesn't matter where you're going to put a mimosa because you're going to mix it with other juices and that's not entirely wrong, however, you are going to taste it and not all sparkling wines, champagnes are made alike, so I think it does make a little bit of a difference what you put in it. Personally, I like my mimosas to be a little bit drier. If you use prosecco, prosecco is naturally very, very sweet and then we're going to be adding other sweet things to it. So I personally find that taste to be a little bit cloying and I prefer cava, which is naturally drier and in particular, I look for things that say brute on the label. All right, first things first, let's open a bottle of champagne. This is my favorite sound in the world probably, but I'm not great at opening these, so I don't know, this might go very badly. I'm definitely not the type that's like really good at the popping the bottle and having the cork go somewhere. I try to keep it pretty contained because I don't want to lose an eye. All right, so twist. Okay, so when constructing your mimosa, champagne first. You put the juice in first and then put champagne, it's going to bubble over the top. You're going to have a problem on your hands. So champagne first. Ratios can be whatever you want. Traditionally, mimosa is equal parts champagne and juice. I personally, I like champagne, so I like to have champagne, which is like a touch of juice. So for our purposes here today, I think maybe what we'll do is a one-third juice, two-thirds champagne, just to play nice. Let's start with our most traditional combination, which is going to be orange juice. Fresh squeezed is best, but we got a lot to get through here, so we're cheating and using bottled. But I'm going to add a little twist to it and add just a little bit of Grand Marnier, which is an orange flavored liqueur. You could also use triple sec, like Cointreau or a Curacao. Those have a different flavor profile, though, than the Grand Marnier. This is a brandy base. It is really delicious and kind of warmer and has more caramel notes than the others. Okay, so to start, a little bit of champagne. If you tilt your glass, you're going to have less, is it head on champagne? Oh, bubbles. Okay, and then we're going to add to this, like an ounce-ish. I could measure, but it's mimosas. Mimosas aren't about measuring. So we're going to add a little bit of Grand Marnier. That's probably like three quarters of an ounce. Then a little bit of orange juice. There we go. And because we want to make things pretty for mom, we should garnish. And in this case, I actually have a couple of options. I have, it's citrus season, so blood oranges are in season and Caracara oranges are in season. So let's cut into these. Ooh, so the Caracara has this beautiful pink color. Almost looks like a grapefruit inside, but it is decidedly an orange. Put the half of this in. There we go. There's our orange mimosa. Okay, next up, we're going to do a mango tajin mimosa, which isn't as exotic as it sounds. We're not going to put tajin in the mimosa. Tajin is a chili lime seasoning. What we're going to do is have a little bit of fun with the garnish. So I have a mango nectar, which you can buy in big bottles. You can buy in the can. You can be really ambitious and squeeze your own mangoes. I mean, depending on my mood, I might. I'm just not in that mood today. And then what we're going to do is we're going to garnish with a little bit of mango dipped in tajin. That play of sweet and salty and that mellow and acidic, I find really enjoyable, and it kind of spices up your typical mimosa. So give it another pour. Shake this up. That just does not seem like enough champagne to me. There we go. Great. Lovely. And now I have a little bit of pre-cut mango. And we're just going to cut into the side of this, and I have a little bit of tajin. Which, by the way, as a snack on its own, if you like mango, not everybody does, apparently, this is fantastic. And there we go. That's our mango tajin mimosa. You could put tajin along the rim if you wanted to just take your rim, put it through a little bit of corn syrup or simple syrup, and then do the tajin. But that seems kind of messy. Mimosa shouldn't be messy. Next up is one of my favorite flavor combinations, and I actually think that this would be wonderful for a fall mimosa. We're heading into spring. Still do this in springtime. But it's a really interesting combination. So this is going to be pomegranate and rosemary. So the first thing we're going to do is bruise our rosemary. To release the oils. So we're going to take a little, just a little bit. We're talking, this is probably a teaspoon's worth of rosemary. And we're just going to massage it a little bit. I was going to say beat it up, but it's more gentle than that. Okay, don't worry. There's more rosemary going into this. So we're going to put this in our glass and then top with champagne. Settle down. There we go. And now we're going to top this with pomegranate juice. This one's really pretty. I love a pretty drink. And then we're going to garnish this with just a little sprig of rosemary. Pomegranate rosemary mimosa. All right, next up we're going to do, we're actually going to do our grapefruit thyme mimosa. Ah, you know what I forgot? Thyme syrup is in the fridge behind you. Will you grab that? So this one requires a little bit of extra credit effort. Because we have a thyme infused simple syrup for this. Normally I would not add simple syrup to a mimosa. However, I'm working with a very dry cava. And grapefruit juice, which naturally has some bitterness to it. So I want to sweeten it up and really impart that thyme flavor via a simple syrup. So per use, we're going to start with our champagne. I'm about done with this bottle. Let's call that a day. And now we're going to take a little bit of grapefruit juice. Ah, settled. And just a little bit of this thyme infused simple syrup. This is super easy to make. I'll put a link to a video up here on how to make infused simple syrups. It is a one-to-one ratio of sugar and water. Bring it to a boil. And then when you're done, stick a few sprigs of fresh thyme in it. And voila, thyme infused simple syrup. I would let it sit, preferably overnight before you use it. Within an hour or so is fine. And this will last a couple weeks in the fridge if you don't go through it first. So just like a quarter of an ounce. This is what I like about mimosas, there's really no measuring. No rules, no measuring. And then we're going to garnish this with some fresh thyme from my garden, because apparently I'm a farmer now. Grapefruit thyme mimosa. Man, I should have clipped that on the side, huh? Maybe let's revisit this garnish. My designer in me can't let this stand. Okay, so now we're going to take a little cocktail clip. Now it's good. There we go. Grapefruit thyme mimosa. And finally, for our last mimosa, we're going very, very tropical. We are going to do a pineapple coconut mimosa. To be perfectly honest, I have not tried this before. I just think it's a good idea. So this is going to be the one that we're going to taste. We're going to get our pineapple flavor from pineapple juice. We're going to get our coconut flavor, though, from coconut rum. So we're just going to play with this one and see how it comes out. So I need a bottle of champagne. It's a thrill every time. Okay, into the glass. I might do a little less champagne in this one, because I really want that coconut rum flavor to come through. Okay, I do about an ounce of our coconut rum. You can do Malibu if you have it. But trust me, you want this. It's amazing. It's a vacation in a bottle. It has none of the sometimes chemical taste that I think Malibu and some of the other infused rums have. This is really fantastic. Kind of a heavy-handed pour, but trust. I have faith this is going to be fantastic. A little pineapple juice. And we're going to garnish this with just a few fronds from a fresh pineapple. What am I going to do? There we go. Pineapple coconut mimosa. All right, let's give this one a taste. Try not to poke my eye out with pineapple fronds. Oh my god, it smells really, really good. That is a vacation mimosa. I am like on the beach right now. That is so good. You've got to try this one. Okay, so of our five mimosas, this one is probably the most unique. I don't think people often combine coconut with champagne, but they should. It's fantastic. The coconut rum really, really does something there. So again, if you're going to set up a mimosa bar, just make sure to keep everything super cold. Keep your champagne on ice. Keep your juices on ice. Even keep your glasses on ice and have fun with the flavors. So if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. And happy Mother's Day. Cheers, friends.