On Cocktail Failures
See that drink above? See how decadent it looks? How creamy? How it’s topped with caramel sauce? Well, I have a secret: It’s terrible.
The drink above is so terrible that there is still still about half a blender of it sitting in the freezer nearly a month after I made it. It is so bad that we have turned to nearly every other tipple in the house rather than empty that pitcher. The drink above was supposed to be a rich frozen milk punch with caramel. What it turned out to be instead was watery, bitter, and bland. And, the lovely caramel sauce I made transformed into some sort of icky candy snake, even while it floated so beautifully on the surface.
So, the point I have been meaning to make is that the problem with failure in the context of the blog for me is that I feel so invested in every drink I make. I wait for the right time of day for photos. I gather ingredients. I make ingredients (like caramel sauce) from scratch. I tinker with proportions and methods. And, then, after all that effort, sometimes nothing I can think of will make the drink work. I’m not a professional of any culinary stripe, nor am I some kind of drinks genius. I know that. But, the energy invested in an aborted cocktail is just such a disappointment. So, sometimes, I try, I fail, and then I have a hard time working up the energy to try again.
In any case, I just wanted to check in and say that any day now, I’ll get back in the saddle and try something else. Hell, I might even post the how-to for the caramel sauce. In the aftermath of that terrible drink, it was a pretty solid ice cream topper. At least the picture turned out nice.
