December 2019 | Cook Now

Easy Champagne Cocktails

Nothing’s more festive than bubbly champagne cocktails! They’re easy to make, and add class and style to any celebration.

Are you ready to celebrate? Champagne has been a festive drink for centuries. Of course, you can just pop the cork and drink it straight up (which Alex and I do, often!). But why not try a champagne cocktail? The tangy, bubbly sparkling wine is perfect with all sorts of flavors, from lemon to St Germain to cranberry. Even just adding one or two ingredients to champagne really alters the flavor and adds depth. And of course, holding a glass says, “Hey, I’m someone with sophistication and class!” Ready to toast?

And now… the best easy champagne cocktails to try!

The Classic Champagne Cocktail

This isn’t just an champagne cocktail, it’s THE champagne cocktail. Yes, the Champagne Cocktail is a classic recipe on the International Bartender's Association list of IBA official cocktails. It's a thing. Even better: it's tangy and refreshing, perfect for sipping with a little nuance from the angostura bitters and lemon. The best part: Adding a sugar cube to champagne makes a fountain of bubbles that positively sparkles! Are you celebrating something? Because this is the drink for you.

St Germain Champagne Cocktail

Here’s a drink that’s made for celebration: a St Germain champagne cocktail! It’s sophisticated and refreshing: floral, botanical, tangy, and bubbly all at once. If you’ve never purchased a bottle of St Germain, now’s the time! It's a liqueur made with elderflowers, the small white flowers of an elderberry plant. This bottle of fancy liqueur should be part of your alcohol arsenal: it's perfect for cocktails of all kinds! But this particular champagne cocktail is our favorite.

Cranberry Champagne Cocktail

Move over cosmos: there's a new cranberry cocktail in town! This cranberry champagne cocktail has a brilliant color and cozy vibe, and the flavor is tart and refreshing. While it's most suitable during fall and winter, you can serve it any time of the year, too! It uses only a few simple ingredients: cranberry juice (make sure to find 100% juice), cointreau, and champagne.

French 75 Cocktail

Here’s one of the most sophisticated and refreshing cocktail recipes out there: a French 75! It’s got a mysterious name, but it’s made with a few simple ingredients. It’s tangy, bubbly, and a bit botanical. Perfect for entertaining, use it as a brunch drink or a dinner party with friends. Really, any occasion is better with this drink in hand! The flavors are simple and classy: gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Champagne.

When to serve champagne cocktails

The champagne cocktails are so festive, they work well for almost any occasions! Here are some times we can imagine serving them, though it’s not an exhaustive list! Champagne cocktails are perfect as a:

New Year’s Eve drink
Christmas or holiday drink
Bridal shower drink or bachelorette party drink
Girls night drink
Celebration drink (job, anniversary, baby, etc!)
Dinner party drink
Romantic dinner drink
Brunch drink (Mother’s Day, etc)

What type of champagne should I buy?

With champagne and most alcohol, the higher the quality, the better the flavor. We use the rule: buy something in the medium price range, and you’re usually safe. That is: don’t buy the cheapest bottle. But don’t go overboard on the most pricey one either! Usually middle of the road in price is a good quality bottle.

Also, make sure to buy “Brut”, which means dry. If you’d like to geek out more on champagne, head to 5 Things to Know About Buying Champagne.

“The” Champagne Cocktail

(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

5 from 5 reviews

Author: Sonja Overhiser
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes
Yield: 1 drink

Print Recipe

Description

The Champagne Cocktail is a classic drink that’s festive and elegant, perfect for celebration. The sugar cube makes it sparkle!

Ingredients

1 sugar cube
5 dashes Angostura bitters
Squeezed lemon peel
1 glass champagne (10 tablespoons)*
For the garnish: Lemon twist

Instructions

Make the lemon twist garnish, if using.
Add a sugar cube to bottom of a champagne flute**. Add 5 dashes of bitters to the sugar cube. Use a vegetable peeler to peel off a small strip of lemon skin. Squeeze the lemon skin into the flute to release the oils.
Fill the glass with champagne and serve immediately: watch how the sugar cube makes the bubbles sparkle! Garnish with a lemon twist if desired (here’s how to make a lemon twist).

Notes

*You’ll get about 5 drinks per 1 bottle of champagne. **You can also serve this drinks on the rocks in a cocktail glass. Follow the same instructions, just place the ice in the glass with the sugar cube, then top with champagne. The drink will have a more subtle flavor.

Category: Drink
Method: Cocktail
Cuisine: Cocktails

Keywords: Champagne Cocktails

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The Best of 2019

Another year come and gone, another batch of delicious recipes tested, shot and shared.

I’m really proud of the recipes we put out this year, both the recipes themselves as well as the photography. The past few years have really seen a shift from quantity to quality, with fewer, longer and more thoroughly tested posts and recipes. I still can’t figure out how I used to post 3-4 times a week (now I’m lucky if I get 2 recipes published).

What’s in store for 2020? Well, if my list of recipe ideas is any indicator, it’s going to be a tasty year!

(Also, because I don’t mention it here often enough, be sure to join our facebook group if you haven’t already! It’s a friendly community and fabulous resource and for anyone looking for cooking tips and recipe inspiration. Join us, won’t you?)

2019 by the numbers:

Posts published: 75
Comments received: 587
Words written: 74,042
Average post length: 987 words
Photos taken: 19,475 (622GB worth!)
Most liked: Chocolate Maraschino Layer Cake (14,050 likes!)
Most pinned: Strawberry Cake Roll
Books read: 64
Countries visited: 5

Without further ado, here are most popular posts from 2019 and from the past decade (be sure to click through to see all of them, including the most popular images from Instagram!)

Your Favorite Posts this Year

These were the top visited posts published this year according to Google Analytics.

1. Sourdough Crackers with Olive Oil & Herbs / 2. Reverse Sear Steak / 3. Strawberry Cake Roll / 4. Crispy Oven-Roasted Broccolini / 5. Matcha Amaretti Cookies / 6. Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Cloud Frosting / 7. Chocolate Amaretti Cookies / 8. Chocolate Pistachio Cream Thumbprints / 9. Homemade Cheese Crackers

(more…)

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How to Make Clear Ice

Clear ice cubes make the most impressive cocktails! After lots of research, we found the very BEST method for how to make clear ice.

Looking for how to make clear ice for cocktails? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve spent hours researching the best way to do it, and found an easy method that works every time! Here’s exactly what you need to do to make the beautiful, crystal clear ice sphere you see in that cocktail glass above.

Why spend the time making clear ice? Well, that’s what I asked Alex when he told me he wanted to create this method. Clear ice? It can’t be that cool, can it? Well, color me impressed when I saw the first cocktail he made with it. The glistening artisanal ice cubes are incredibly beautiful to look at, and make any cocktail look simply stunning. It’s the perfect party trick to impress your guests: and they’ll feel like 1 million bucks drinking it. Here’s our simple method.

How to make clear ice: a tutorial

Here’s the basic idea behind how to make clear ice. Normal ice cubes are frozen from all sides at the same time. This results in uneven freezing, which makes less perfect ice formations and traps all air and particles in the center of the cube. By freezing water in a cooler, you force the water to freeze directionally: from the top down. This allows for the ice to form perfect crystals: crystal clear ice! All of the dissolved air and particles end up in the water beneath the ice block.

Step 1: Freeze warm water in a cooler for 18 to 24 hours.

Find a small cooler that fits inside your freezer. Then fill the cooler with 4 to 5 inches of warm tap water. Make sure the water is not hot! Place the cooler inside your freezer with the lid off. That’s it! Freeze the cooler for 18 to 24 hours until several inches of the water have frozen. You’ll want to still have some water left under the ice, which prevents the ice from getting cloudy.

Here’s what it will look like at this point. You’ll see that our ice does have a few crystals on the outside edge: you can discard anything that’s too frosty. Or use it, if you don’t care (like us!).

Step 2: Remove the ice from the cooler.

When the block ice is ready, remove it from the cooler to get ready to get it into cubes. To do so, place the cooler upside down in the sink for 5 to 10 minutes. The ice block may fall out on its own. Or, give it a gentle shake to pop it out of the cooler.

Step 3: Cut the ice into cubes with a serrated knife.

Here’s where it gets fun! You’ll use a serrated knife to cut the ice into the desired size of chunks. It will be less about cutting and more about scoring the ice so that it snaps off. Here’s what to do:

Hold the ice with a towel or oven mitt.
Cut out a strip of ice: lightly score the top of the ice with a serrated knife, sliding the knife back and forth until a strip of the ice snaps off.
Use the same scoring method to cut the strip into cubes.

Step 3: Shape the clear ice chunks with an ice pick (optional).

For any ice you plan to serve right away, you can use an ice pick to hone the final shape. There’s a whole art to shaping ice that we won’t pretend to be experts in! We use an ice pick to hone the shape into what you see in the pictures: like to make an ice sphere or to simply fit it into the glass. See the section below on shaping ice for more info!

Shape the ice with an ice pick — An ice pick isn’t required, but it makes for beautifully shaped cubes!

Step 4: Store the clear ice.

Store any ice you’re not planning to use immediately in the freezer in a closed container, where it keeps indefinitely. But important! Before using the frozen ice in a drink, allow the ice cube to sit at room temperature to temper it for 2 minutes. This prevents cracking. It also allows the outer layer (and any freezer burn) to melt off of the ice.

Lemon margarita — Glistening ice in a Simple Lemon Margarita

Cocktails made perfect with clear ice!

Ready to serve your clear ice? So many cocktails are made more perfect with clear ice in the glass. Here’s a list of cocktails we’ve made lately and photographed using clear ice (click over to see the photos):

Sea breeze cocktail recipe — Crystal clear ice makes a Sea Breeze Cocktail more fun!

Alternate method: how to make clear ice cubes

Those artisanal ice spheres are simply stunning, aren’t they? Luckily, that’s the easiest method and our primary path for how to make clear ice. This is the method Alex uses to make clear ice when we want to make it for cocktails. However, what if you want to make clear ice cubes that are perfectly spherical?

Well, we’ve got a method for that too! Since way to make clear ice for cocktails requires a bit more special equipment and requires a little more effort, we recommend the primary path above. But if you like the look of these ice cubes, here’s how we did this version:

Use a silicone ice cube tray with holes punched into bottom of each cube. Place the ice cube tray on a small riser inside of your small cooler (we used cookie cutters).
Fill the cooler so the warm water just barely covers the ice cube tray.
Place the cooler in the freezer and wait 15 to 20 hours until several inches have frozen.
Remove the ice by placing the cooler upside down in sink for 5 to 10 minutes, then gently shaking the ice block out.
There will be a large block of ice around the ice tray, which you can break off with an ice pick or your hands and use for block ice.
Pop the cubes out of the silicone tray. Perfectly clear ice cubes, ready for action!

Tips on how to shape clear block ice

For the purposes of this article: anything goes with shaping your ice! It’s definitely an art form that some bartenders take to a very high level. This method is intended for home cooks who want to up their cocktail game, so we won’t provide an in-depth shaping resource. However, here are a few tips:

Use an ice pick. An ice pick makes for those beautiful irregular edges. It helps to fit the ice into the glass. Here’s the ice pick that we use.
Watch the masters. Want to make an ice sphere? Here’s a video on how the professionals do it.
Study up. Here’s an article on the best ice for each type of cocktail.

Troubleshooting clear ice: what if it doesn’t turn out perfectly clear?

Many online sources recommend using distilled, filtered, or boiled water in ice cube trays. Alex and I tested all of these methods, and here’s what we found: generally, this will not result in fully clear ice! So luckily, you don’t have to bother with this in our method.

That said: if for some reason you don’t get perfectly clear ice using our method, you can experiment with filtered or boiled (and cooled) water in the cooler! This may reduce dissolved air or particulates.