A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law came down to her basement and caught Rob and I rummaging through their extensive liquor collection. My in-laws get bottles as gifts and keep them for years and years without actually drinking them. She invited us to take whatever we wanted, and we carted home a bottle each. Rob choose the biggest bottle of Grey Goose Vanilla we’ve ever seen, and I picked a bottle of pear liquor I’d never heard of before but thought was really pretty.

This is it out of the freezer and with a bit poured out, which I drank straight up. I thought it would be fairly mild, but one sip made my hair go straight. It needs a mixer!

I’d love to do a spicy, Christmasy “signature drink” for parties with it, but I have no idea where to get recipes other than “mix with sparkling wine” which I might well do.

Anyone have any good ideas?

It’s warmer, and I make damn good iced coffee, so here is my recipe.

Start with quality beans. There is a saying that says, “Anything worth doing is worth doing right”.  I don’t think that applies to everything, but it certainly does to coffee.  Iced especially.

Mine is whole bean, organic, shade-grown and fair trade, because I’m “like that”.

Make coffee as you normally would, but do it double-strength. 1 standard coffee scoop equals 2 tablespoons, and one scoop of the ground beans makes 2 cups of coffee. Simply – a tablespoon of coffee grounds per cup for normal joe, and so two tablespoons per cup for iced.

This is as good a time as any to give you my two cents about coffee-making methods. French presses rule. Coffee pots take up huge amounts of space and don’t make coffee nearly as well.

I recommend only doing a day or two’s worth of coffee at a time. Day-old ice coffee isn’t horrible like day-old regular coffee, but if it sits too long, even in the fridge, it’s just as gross.

While your coffee is brewing (or steeping), put as much sugar as you’d like in the bottom of a clean glass jar. (The glass jar trick is something I got from my grandmother – the Italian one.) The glass holds up to the heat better than a plastic pitcher would, and, of course, if you use an old sauce jar like I did, you’re recycling, and woo hoo for that!

Pour the hot coffee on the sugar and stir it to dissolve. Alternatively, you can make simple syrup so that people who don’t want sugar in their iced coffee can drink this along with people who do.  If you think that’ll be the case, though, it’s simpler to make two jars and label them sweet and non.  But I give you options.

Screw on the lid and move the jar carefully to the fridge. It’s really hot (I burned myself). It will also look like swamp water in a jar in your fridge. Warn your family you haven’t lost your mind bottling pond scum; it’s just coffee.

Don’t add milk; wait until it’s being served to do that, or it will taste off.

THE NEXT MORNING:

Pack plenty of ice in your cup. Brewing the coffee double-strength is what helps it stand up to being watered down by ice melting.

Pour the coffee over the ice. I probably didn’t have to tell you that, but I had a picture for this step. It was pretty tricky snapping photos with one hand while pouring with the other, and I managed to do it without spilling or dropping the camera. So just appreciate this pouring photo, even if you don’t need it, ok? Thanks. You’re awesome.

Add your milk, stick in a straw if you want one (I like mine bendy, and with pretty red stripes as you can see), and enjoy!

Happy summery mornings to you!