New Year's Eve Champagne cocktails

French 75 cocktail

Ingredients

1 ounce gin

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1/2 ounce simple syrup*

Champagne, Cava, or Prosecco>

lemon peel, for garnish

*For simple syrup, combine one part sugar and one part water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring, and simmer until sugar has dissolved. Cool.

Method

Shake first three ingredients with ice. Strain into a Champagne flute or saucer. Top with Champagne, Cava, or Prosecco. Garnish with a curly, thin twist of lemon peel.

Lauren Mote’s spin on a French 75

1 ounce fino sherry

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1/2 ounce green cardamom syrup (for recipe, see below)

1 dash Fee Brothers Peach Bitters (available at Gourmet Warehouse)

Champagne, Cava, or Prosecco

lemon peel, for garnish

Method

Shake first three ingredients with ice. Strain into a Champagne flute or saucer. Top with Champagne, Cava, or Prosecco. Garnish with a curly, thin twist of lemon peel.

Non-alcoholic twist on French 75 cocktail

Ingredients

1 ounce lemon juice

1 ounce green cardamom syrup (for recipe, see below)

Fentimans Dandelion and Burdock Soda

Method

Combine ingredients over ice in a tall Collins glass.

Green cardamom syrup

For use in the above cocktails

Ingredients

500 millilitres sugar

500 millilitres hot water

10 green cardamom pods, toasted and crushed with a mortar and pestle

Method

Combine sugar and hot water. Add cardamom. Stir to dissolve. Infuse cardamom for at least an hour, then remove. Syrup may be refrigerated for up to a week.

Recipes by Lauren Mote of Kale & Nori Culinary Arts. Printed with permission. All rights reserved.