River Run Cocktail & Cowboy Cocktail

Simone gives the kitty side eye to Sandra's dodgy cocktail.

A while back, we did a pinch Sandra Lee tasting on a trip back to Houston. I'm only just getting around to posting, but the sour memory of these two drinks looms large. Shockingly enough, I don't actually travel with Sandra Lee's Cocktail Time. Leave it to the internet and foodtv.com to make sure we are never more than a few clicks away from Sandra's genius. I also don't travel with a fully stocked bar, so I had to find a couple of recipes that used what our friends already had in their apartment. Enter the River Run Cocktail and the Cowboy Cocktail.

Sandra has a special affinity for technicolored drinks and the River Run Cocktail certainly fits the bill. This is the perfect drink for matching your drink to your dress, a must at any semi-homemade dinner party. It is also the perfect drink for using up that last bit of amaretto lingering at the bottom of the bottle. The recipe (the one online at least) consists of amaretto, blue curacao and champagne. Sandra also has a recipe in her book with the same name that is almost the same recipe as the Cowboy Cocktail she has online. Which leads me to believe that the entire Semi-homemade empire suffers woefully from a lack of editing. Or that Sandra was a little tipsy the day she had to come up with names and some got recycled. In any case, the drink isn't as bad as it sounds. It's not good, but it could be far worse.

The Reactions:

• Not that terrible, just not that good. 
• After taste that I can't place, and I'm not sure I want to.
• Just tastes like champagne.
• Tastes better than champagne.
• Tastes like a generic, weak cider.
• Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. 

 

The Cowboy Cocktail really doesn't sound bad in theory. Mint, beer, lime, and tequila combined have the potential to be a super margarita/mojito/boilermaker hybrid.  Sadly, Sandra, doesn't create a super cocktail hybrid with this recipe. The Cowboy Cocktail veers more into train wreck territory. Just too much going on in one drink. I felt like we wasted good beer and tequila (and lime and mint for that matter). I have no idea how this even got three stars on the food network site. Maybe Sandra makes her staffers rate her recipes. Also, no self-respecting cowboy would ever drink this cocktail.

The obligatory thoughtful Cory pic

The Reactions:

• It's like tea meets beer.
• It looks like pee.
• Ew. Thar's horrible.
• Just a nasty bitter. 
• Like the worst parts of tea and beer. 
• Oh god, what the hell is up with that?

Tropical Smoothie

Before: A few weeks ago, two of my favorite people (my mom and my niece) came to visit for the weekend. What better way to welcome them into my home than a tasty Sandra Lee drink? Since Skylar is a minor, we chose one of a handful of Sandra's non-alcoholic drinks. I would argue that a few sips of some of Sandra's more questionable drinks would be sure to turn her off drinking forever, but I also want her parents to let her come visit again so we went alcohol free. I chose the tropical smoothie mostly because it was the first one I flipped to in Semi-Homemade Cocktail Time. A bonus was that I didn't have to go out and buy anything weird that will stay in my cabinets for years. 

As far as smoothies go, Sandra's tropical smoothie is fine. It's certainly not anything I'd go out of my way to have again, but it's not terrible. It's mostly just banana, yogurt, pineapple and coconut milk. Nothing groundbreaking and really not something you'd need a recipe to make. My biggest complaint is that it makes a lot of smoothie. The Vanilla Choco-tini makes a tiny little drink and the tropical smoothie makes a huge tumblerful of drink. Where's the consistency? Maybe that's too much to expect from Sandra and her team of writers. We were all tired of drinking the tropical smoothie pretty quickly and then it was just warm fruity tasting foam. No one wants that. Oddly enough, I thought a little rum would have actually improved the drink. You know Sandra adds some to hers.

 After drink reactions:

• A little bland, but I actually like it. 
• Really good - very thick and creamy.
• It's refreshing and I like the glass. 
• An average smoothie
• Needs rum...

Vanilla Chocotini, Ricotta Berry Bursts, and Knight's Delight

 

Before: Yes, it's been awhile. My waist and my liver took a much needed break from the blog. Two of our most loyal testers were in town for the night, so it seemed a good time to revisit our old friend Sandra. It had been awhile since I'd had to go out and buy ridiculous liqueurs, so I'd forgotten about one of the worst parts - actually asking the sales clerk if they have said ridiculous liqueur. Granted, Godiva liqueur isn't as bad as pomegranate liqueur, but it's not something I'd normally seek out. At least I can use it in coffee. You may notice the Creme de Grand Marnier in the picture. You may also know that Creme de Grand Marnier hasn't been available in the US for at least a decade. The above bottle is from 1965. We found out the hard way that this particular alcohol does not age, it solidifies. I still have nightmares about the smell. Needless to say, we did not actually drink any.

On paper, the Vanilla Chocotini seems harmless. Really, the worst part is that it's called a Vanilla Chocotini. It's just vanilla vodka and chocolate liqueur. It was fine. Not really good, but not really bad either. The only complaint I have is that Sandra's recipe only has 1 1/4 ounces of liquid and she has a picture of a full martini glass beside it. It could be a typo or it could be laziness. Who knows? The drink itself tasted like something your high school friend would serve at her bridal shower. Sweet and forgettable. Since we used white chocolate liqueur, it ended up looking a lot like the dreaded buca-cino. Thankfully, it tasted tons better. I'll never drink one again, but at least the thought of a Vanilla Chocotini won't make me shudder. 

 The after drink reactions:

• It's good when it goes in your mouth!
• Something's not right. 
• Tastes like medicine and milk.
• I'm not feeling bad.
• Not chocolatey, just sweet.

 Sandra has a recipe called ricotta berry bursts that is basically just ricotta cheese and jam mixed together and poured into a premade graham cracker crusts. For some inexplicable reason she brushes the premade crusts with egg white and bakes them. If you are going to go to the trouble of doing that, why not just make the crusts from scratch? Sandra is weird like that.  My version didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. I'd used silicone baking cups and they made the crust soggy. Also, the cups were just bland. Maybe I needed more sugar. Or a jar of jam.

The inexplicably named knight delight consists of white chocolate liqueur, half and half, and orange liqueur. This drink was really good. For real. It's a good dessert drink. The half and half cuts the sweetness and the orange gives it an interesting flavor. Kind of like a boozy orange julius. I don't see anyone going on a knight delight bender, but I could see having more than one. Definitely a good drink to have if you want something sweet and are out of Kahlua to make white russians with.

 

The after drink reactions: 

• Sandra Lee and foam just scares me. 
• Tastes just like the Chocotini with a hint of orange.
• I like the orange. This one's better.
• I'd drink this again. First one I would say that about. 

I'm going to try and post more regularly. It seems a shame to drink so many of those disgusting drinks and not finish out the book.

Bloody Mary, Balsamic Tomatoes, and Ciroc Cherry Blossom

Before: Our new house in Arkansas has tomato plants along one side. So, we have had a ton of tomatoes lately. What does this have to do with cocktails? Well, I made tomato sauce with some of them and had some fresh tomato juice as a byproduct. And what better way to use tomato juice than a bloody mary. Luckily, Sandra Lee has a bloody mary recipe in Cocktail Time. Fresh squeezed tomato juice may be pretty far from semi-homemade, but I powered through anyways. I had to buy pomegranate liqueur for the cherry blossom. Walking through the liquor store with a bottle called "luscious pomegranate pleasure" was not the high point of my week. I'll probably have it for the next twenty years. At least it can keep the vanilla liqueur company. 

I'll admit that I really want to like bloody mary's. I want it to be my drink of choice when I'm an old lady and go out for brunch with all my old lady friends. Until this taste test, though, I've only had one or two. So, unlike the vague dread I have before most of Sandra's drinks, I went in really wanting to like it. As a bonus, her bloody mary recipe is pretty standard - just tomato juice, hot sauce, lemon, and worcestershire sauce. The only weird thing is that she has a salted rim. I guess she had to add her signature crazy touch to an otherwise normal drink.  Cory wasn't crazy about the idea of a spicy cocktail, but I thought it was refreshing. I even drank a second one, but left off the salted rim.

 The after drink reactions:

• Nothing particularly Sandra-y about this. 
• Least sweet drink we've had.
• The salted rim is a little much.
• I can't tell if it's Sandra Lee or me.
• I don't hate it. 
• Spicy and boozy are a weird combo.
• I'd drink 3 or 4 of these at brunch with some huevos rancheros.

As I mentioned, we have a ton of tomatoes, so I needed to find a good use for some. Sandra has a recipe for balsamic tomatoes, so I went with that. Honestly, I didn't really look at her recipe until a few minutes ago. I just topped the tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, and parmesan cheese and put it under the broiler for a few minutes. They were super quick. Sandra uses Newman's Own salad dressing instead of oil and vinegar. Nothing against Paul Newman, in fact I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but broiled salad dressing isn't my first choice. It was a quick and easy snack, though, even with all the extra effort it took to drizzle the oil and vinegar separately.

Sandra calls for Ciroc vodka in her aptly named Ciroc cherry blossom. Since, I don't have a sweet liquor sponsor, I went with a much cheaper vodka. I'm pretty sure that the cheap vodka made the drink worse than it would have been if I'd used Puffy's finest. The drink still wouldn't have been great, but probably noticeably better than my version using the best vodka Canada has to offer. That being said, the cherry blossom wasn't very good. The first sip is okay, but then it gets worse. It looks and tastes a lot like cough syrup. Sandra says that you can top it off with club soda or champagne. I don't have extra champagne lying around like Sandra, so used club soda. This was definitely the way to go. The club soda version is a solidly mediocre drink. I'm pretty sure the champagne version would be close to undrinkable. 

The after drink reactions:

• Like a boozy Italian soda.
• Vodka quality may be an issue here.
• It gets a bit more cough syrup-y the more you drink.
• Tastes like at least a couple of drinks that we've already had.
• Champagne would make it awful.
• It's like there's the potential for a good drink.

The last few drinks we've had haven't been that bad. I'm expecting something just awful to come up in the rotation soon.

Roman Column, Cafe Roma Martini, Cream Twist

Before: With a bottle full of homemade Irish cream, it was time to knockout a few of the Irish cream drinks in Cocktail Time. As a bonus, two of the drinks are the last two drinks with Sambuca. Knowing that I won't have to drink any more licorice flavored drinks was definitely an added incentive to get the Roman column and the cafe roma martini out of the way. For some reason, every drink in Cocktail Time that uses Sambuca has milk or cream in it. Sandra must have fond childhood memories of black jellybeans and milk.

The Roman column is sambuca, Irish cream, and half and half. I am assuming Sandra named it a Roman column because actual sambuca (not the cheap knock off I bought) is from Rome. Either that or the glass she drank it in looked like a Roman column. The drink wasn't really that bad. It was sweet and kind of heavy because of all the half and half. The coffee bean garnish was a little ridiculous. No one wants to worry about choking on a coffee bean as she drinks her cocktail. But since Sandra calls for coffee beans floating around in her cocktails, who am I to question her wisdom? God knows she has a lot more cocktail drinking experience than me.

 The reactions:

• Better than a buca-cino.
• Like drinking a black jelly bean.
• The coffee bean garnish makes it feel extra festive.
• Ooh, I just ate a coffee bean . . . it was kinda gross.
• Gets better as the ice melts.
• It doesn't make me want to throw up.

The cafe roma martini has the exact same ingredients as the Roman column, just in different proportions. I don't think these should really be two separate recipes, but I guess Sandra needed filler. Not surprisingly, the drinks didn't really taste that different. The Roman column had more sambuca, but the half and half dulled the taste a lot. With only a splash of half and half, the cafe roma has a much stronger licorice taste. This can be good or bad depending on how you feel about licorice. Personally, I'm not a huge fan. My favorite part of the drink was the garnish. Like the Roman column, Sandra has a coffee bean garnish, but only three coffee beans. I have no idea why - Catholic symbolism maybe?

The reactions:

• Really a lot of flavors going on.
• Crosses the sambuca line.
• Needs more half and half to drown out the taste.
• The three coffee bean garnish - very classy.

The highlight of the night was definitely the cream twist. It may be my favorite Sandra drink so far. It is just vanilla vodka and Irish cream, so it is plenty boozy. With only two ingredients, it avoids the typical Sandra Lee problem of way too much going on in one drink problem. And it doesn't even have an annoying name. I would even voluntarily make this again. If all the drinks in Cocktail Time were this good, I wouldn't be writing this blog, though.

The reactions:

• Like a boozy milkshake. Go Sandra!
• One of her more drinkable drinks. 
• Like a white Russian without all the coffee flavor.

It's been awhile since we've had some of Sandra's stronger, boozier drinks. So next week we'll try a few of those. I'll spend the week prepping myself for something no one should drink.