Eggs-traordinary Easter cocktails

Easter is not a holiday known for its cocktails. Some mixologists are trying to change that, creating a bevy of unusual drinks with an Easter theme. Many of these beverages require a lot of advance planning and more than a little imagination. Take the team behind Portobello Road gin, which has created the Not Cross Bun Gin Martini. They began “by distilling high-strength alcohol with actual hot cross buns to create a super-concentrated essence that is then sprayed into a frozen glass. It is served with raisin-infused dry vermouth and garnished with a lemon cross.”

Not all of the Easter-themed drinks are quite as involved. At Skylon in London, an Easter cocktail features cognac and grapes plus hazelnut liqueur and chocolate bitters. Several cocktails feature rhubarb, one of the first garden offerings of the spring. The Champagne rhubarb cocktail from Delicious Magazine (UK) (shown top left) pairs the vegetable with oranges, gin, and champagne to make a delicately pink-hued drink. 

Instead of using the season’s first fruits or vegetables, some cocktails incorporate the many candies of Easter. Jelly bean cocktail recipes abound, including the Pink jelly bean from Better Homes and Gardens Magazine (top right) and the Jelly bean cocktail from The Kitchn. If that isn’t sweet enough for you, there’s always the Peep vodka lemon drop from Baking Bites by Nicole Weston (shown right). That should satisfy even the biggest sweet tooth.