The Sunflower Cocktail with Elderflower and Passion Fruit

Have you ever mixed cocktails at home? I love hosting dinner parties, but when I do, I always leave the task of barman to my husband, so I can take care of the food. And my husband’s favourite cocktail to make is: the Sunflower.

Well, it’s not like he greets me every evening with a sunflower aperitif, but this cocktail is certainly famous in our household. In fact my husband created it during a cocktail masterclass at Kettner’s in Soho and he even won a prize for it!

So when House of Fraser asked me to share my favourite cocktail recipe, I asked my husband to recreate the Sunflower.

The original recipe (which you can also find on my blog) was tweaked a bit, so here you can find the new addition of St Germain, a French liqueur made with freshly-picked elderflowers. We didn’t have vodka at home, so that was replaced with gin.

Other ingredients are the elderflower cordial and orange bitters (which you can buy from specialised liqueur stores). Add a splash of passion fruit, lime and lemon juices and you get the new Sunflower!

To help me style this recipe, House of Fraser kindly sent me these beautiful Casa Couture copper cocktail shaker and BIBA gold rimmed glass. They add a touch of glamour to my new mid-century style bar cart, which I finally bought a few days ago to store all our spirits bottles and glasses.

Ingredients

• 65ml Dry Gin
• 25ml St Germain
• 50ml elderflower cordial
• 5ml orange bitters
• 25ml passion fruit juice (from 1 fruit)
• 1/4 tsp lime juice
• 1/4 tsp lemon juice
• ice cubes

Preparation

Mix the gin, St Germain, cordial and orange bitters into a cocktail shaker.

Scoop out pulp and seeds from passion fruit, pass through a strainer, keep the juice.

Add the passion fruit juice to the shaker, together with lime and lemon juices.

Add ice cubes and shake. Pour the cocktail in the glass and serve.

Thanks to my husband Sandy for the recipe and for modelling for this post! :)

Disclaimer: the glasses and cocktail shaker were gifted by House of Fraser. All opinions are my own.