Sunrise Champagne Cocktail

Well, I do not know about but anytime I invite guests—watch, I always like to provide them with a special champagne cocktail. And the edition prepared one especially for you. This is one of my favorites where we use this variety fresh fruit and we also use some special liqueur. But you can use a variety of other different kinds of things and you do not have to do this as alcohol, you can also use this as sparkling insider. But I like to serve this wonderful champagne. This is very retro. Lot of these things are coming back and I think they are very fun. This particular glass is actually great to be utilized by other things so it’s a wonderful sort of all purpose piece, but you can also use the classic and traditional float. This is great for the champagne bubbles. It’s lovely and it will certainly do the trick. And let’s get started on the cocktail.

I think you’ll find it very enjoyable. You can also use fresh frozen concentrate orange juice but we’re going to use actually a fresh orange here. I'm going to slice the orange and you can see what beautiful oranges these are, really nice in color and they smell delicious. So what I do is I basically line the glass with the juice of the orange. And you’ll see why I’m doing this and just have good time with this. Remember, food is fun. You should not be anything in terms of perfection about this. And I dip this in. You can dip it in a super fine sugar but it actually adds a festive sort of look to the glass. Isn’t that lovely? And then we will do the same thing with this one. And now, I have a drink ready for you.

Well, I mentioned about the reamers and there is a variety of reamers you can use. This is a great one because it actually collects the juice for you and actually the seeds as well. This one is nice as well because you can place this over actually the glass if you choose. But I'm going to show you one of my favorites. This is a new device that I found at a wonderful cooking store. They actually have it for limes, oranges as well as lemons and I find the smaller lemons are a little sweeter so this lemon actual juicer works very well for me. And I’m going to squeeze this and we’re going to get one full orange on this. Look at the juice coming out of that. Is that lovely? Fabulous! Delicious! You could smell the zests on this too. Actually that helps squeeze the oils as well. Nice really. Terrific!

Look at the juice of this. Spraying it all over the place, I love it. Okay. Now, we’re going to top this with a great cranberry liqueur and I used this a lot on the holidays but it’s wonderful for this Sunrise Champagne Cocktail. And the color is really quite lovely, sort of deep lovely color, little splash and then you can actually use a variety of champagnes specifically you can use a blush champagne. And that’s what we’re using right now or you’ll see the lovely rose color which kind of adds to this sort of drama of this drink. And look at the fizz and the bubbles. And we are in business. Put a little sprig of mint to dress this lovely champagne glass. And you can also put a nice slice of orange in there as well.

And I’m going to do exactly the same thing. I’m going to use this lovely classic fruit glass and I’m going to rim the rind around it and dip it into the sugar. And again, I’ll produce that lovely sort of crystallized ice looking rim. And then I’m going to take this orange here and squeeze again. Catch all that juice and then what we’ll do is we’re going to use—I found this in the fridge and actually you can use variety of things. We also can use cranberry juice cocktail mix which is frozen and just pour a little bit of that after it’s defrosted, but we’ve found some raspberry juice and this is going to be just beautiful. Look at the color. And it serves just the same sort of festive purpose. And I’m going to top if off with this lovely sparkling cider and we’re going to garnish again with a sprig of mint. And you know what I like about this as well is that you know what, this drink actually allows the children to actually get involve in the beginning of the celebration. It’s good for them. It’s just as lovely and look at that, isn’t that pretty? And you know what, I can also garnish it with a lovely slice of orange. It sort of like enhances the overall look and brings the color in. Just take a couple wedges here and just nicely slip and we’re just going slip, put that right there. We can also do it on these lovely glasses as well.

Granola Parfait

When you get started, one of the favorite items at Sweet Edition which is their Granola Yogurt Parfait and if you haven’t had it, you’re really going to enjoy it. Let’s make it and I’ll show you here. I love this. It’s made with fresh coconut, oats, honey, dried cranberries, apricots, some pistachio nuts and some dried cherries. And it’s also made with some honey and it’s toasted and it’s delicious. And you can also learn how to make this fabulous Granola on one of Sweet Edition’s new cooking programs. I like to use it as a trail mix.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get started by putting just a little bit in one of the parfait glasses and I think you’ll see we have a variety of ways to make this. And again as I mentioned before I love to use different types of goblets. I think they really speak about the meal itself and you can use a variety of things rather than just putting it in a bowl which is really nice. Go around your covers and see what you really have there that you can utilize for interesting ways to serve your food. So, I'm going to put a little bit on the bottom here. And then I'm going to top it with some fresh fruit. And this all wonderful and cut up, it’s a great way to start your day. And we’ve already had a fabulous champagne cocktail so let’s start with this. Now, the yogurt was basic low fat plain yogurt. Now, you can actually mix in some flavorings to this. You can put a little vanilla if you’d like, maybe a little mint and even if you’d like a little bit of honey but because the kernel is already pretty sweet, I’d like to use because I like that tartness against the sweet. I'm really big on that.

There is another thing that you can use or actually take advantage of and I'm not sure if you’ve heard about this but it’s called Yogurt Cheese. And all it is, is taking actual yogurt and putting it in a coffee filter or sometimes you actually go to a specific grocery store and/or a specialty food store and they have yogurt strainers. You’d put your yogurt in here and then put it into the refrigerator and let it fit for at least 24 hours and what you’ll find is the way will actually extract out and you’ll get this very concentrated almost like a cream cheese. It’s delicious. But if you like the texture sort of more a deeper consistency, then try that. It’s also great if you just want to spread that on toaster. But we’re going to use actually the lovely sour cream and I'm going to top this off now here and look at that. Look at those colors. Beautiful!

And we’re going to also now just do a little bit more. Again, look at those beautiful cherries and the wonderful coconut and apricots and some of the beautiful cranberries. Top off with a little bit more and I'm just going to put a lovely white dollop up here. Look at that. It’s kind of napping the fruit. I love the layers of this. As you can see everything, is that inviting? We’re going to put a pretty sprig of mint right here and also right here. And we’ve got fabulous Parfait Yogurt Granola sandwich.