Fresh Lilac Cocktail

When you make a springtime visit to the house of Olive and Love, and the lilacs are in full, glorious bloom…well, you make liqueur with them. And then things get weird and you are suddenly drinking cocktails and hanging out with bearded dragons and unicorns. Read about that whole adventure here.

And for the record: dragons are much less judgey than chickens. Fact.

But let’s make some floral cocktails, shall we?

To make two beverages, you’ll need:

• 5 oz. lilac liqueur (recipe below)
• 1 oz. Cointreau
• .5 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 1.5 oz. simple syrup
• Several lilac blossoms for garnish

To make lilac liqueur:

Place 1 cup of lilac petals (no green bits, please) and 2.5 cups of vodka into a mason jar, cap tightly, and store for a week in a cool, dark place. Shake every once in awhile. After one week, solids blossoms from liquid. Continue storing in a cool, dark place, or put that fancy sh** in a shaker and make something with it! If you’d like your liqueur to have a slight lavender tint to it, you can drop a few blueberries into the jar with the petals (we didn’t have any fresh blueberries so we skipped it).

When you’re ready to make your cocktails, put all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake thoroughly. Strain into two fancy coupe glasses, and garnish by floating several lilac blossoms across the surface. This is a pinky-out beverage, people; mind your form, mind your form.