Our Valentines cocktail mixes Sea Buckthorn with Yorkshire rhubarb, ginger and cardamom.
Like love its-self it gives you a little tingle – 😉: flavours that are sweet and fragrant but also warming and sharp. All you rhubarb lovers out there need to make this delicious cocktail and share the romance!
February is the start of the forced Yorkshire rhubarb season, its grown in sheds by candlelight, honestly it’s a magical sight and produces the sweetest stems of the year. You can also go out and forage a garnish of wood sorrel – there is some guidance at the bottom of the page.
Ingredients for each cocktail
• 50ml Bax Botanics Sea Buckthorn     – Buy it now!!!
• 50ml Rhubarb and ginger syrup
• 25ml cardamom syrup
• 10ml aquafaba (chickpea water)
• Ice
• Wood Sorrel or Rose petal garnish
To make the syrups
For the rhubarb syrup Clean and chop 200g rhubarb and add it to a saucepan with a 2.5cm piece of root ginger (grated), 150ml water and 100g sugar. Simmer gently for 30 minutes then strain off the syrup reserving the rhubarb to use in another dish.
The Cardamom syrup is made as you would for any herb or spice syrup. Measure our equal volume of sugar and water into a saucepan. Add a dessertspoonful of cardamom pods and heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Press the cardamom pods a little to help extract flavour and put a lid on the pan. Simmer gently for 20 minutes than take off the heat. When cool strain into a bottle and store in the fridge. The syrup will keep for a week.
If you want to keep the syrup for longer sterilise the storage bottle, lid, sieve and funnel then bottle the syrup while it’s still hot. That way it will last much longer, – do store it in the fridge though if you’re not confident of it keeping.
To assemble the cocktail
Simply shake all the ingredients together with ice, then take out the ice and shake again. Strain into a coupe and float a leaf of wood Sorrel or a rose petal on top.

Wood Sorrel

If you fancy foraging for a few leaves of Wood Sorrel you need to look in an old woodland or hedgerow. It grows in partial shade under trees. If you find something that looks similar growing out in the open, amongst grass, that will be clover, don’t worry though it’s not poisonous, it just doesn’t have the same lovely flavour of Bramley apples. Always be sure of your identification before you eat any wild food.