New Year’s Champagne Cocktail with Meyer Lemon Syrup {Powernap}

This is the latest installment of my Powernap column. The series where I share quick, easy food that can be made for all kinds of situations. Powernaps are short and sweet, and so are these recipes. These are the things I make in a jiffy when I need a quick snack, am in the mood for a recipe experiment, or simply need to clean out the pantry.

Today’s Powernap: I still have a dozen Meyer lemons in the fridge and a New Year’s party to plan for – cocktail time!

KITCHENAID MIXER GIVEAWAY! Don’t forget to enter below to enter the Duda Farm Fresh Giveaway for a Meyer Lemons, a $25 Williams-Sonoma giftcard and a KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixer in Majestic Yellow. Entry rules below, click here for contest introduction.

This year our friends are hosting a New Year’s Eve family potluck. The kids will be in the playroom with pizza and the adults will be in the dining room with a decadent spread. I have committed to bringing two desserts (you’ll read about those soon!) and a signature cocktail. We are all bringing different kinds of cocktails so the bar will be like it’s own potluck too. (And, yes, we have designated drivers!)

To come up with our signature cocktail I started by looking in the fridge. Drawing on the last of my Meyer lemons supply I decided to make a lemon simple syrup to flavor and sweeten a drink. But to decide what liquor we wanted to sweeten took some experimenting.

After our daughter was asleep on evening my husband, ever the experienced bartender, paraded out several liquors and bubbly beverages to test drive the simple syrup. After several failed attempts to make a festive, unique drink, we finally landed on this riff on the Prince of Wales cocktail we found in Saveur recently. It had just the right amount of fun (champagne) and serious flavor (rye whiskey, maraschino liqueur). We loved how the happy bubbles look a tad more serious with the addition of the darker liquors. Given that it is a bit different than the actual Prince of Wales we decided to call it the Princish of Wales and hope everyone else likes it too.

Rules for Homemade Gift Giveaway & KitchenAid mixer grand prize!:

1. Leave a comment sharing what your favorite homemade edible gift to give or receive.

2. Subscribe to The Naptime Chef newsletter (upper right hand corner) – I’ll check!

3. Become a fan of The Naptime Chef on Facebook
4. Visit Duda’s website and tell me what recipe you would like to try to make using meyer lemons (use the ‘Older Entries’ link at the bottom of the page to view even more recipes). Leave a comment telling me which recipe.

5. 1 Extra Entry: Share the link to this post with your friends on Facebook and link to @TheNaptimeChef Facebook fanpage

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9. Weekly winners will be announced on Sunday December 11th at 7:00am ET, Sunday December 18th at 7:00am ET, and Monday December 26th at 7:00am ET. The GRAND PRIZE drawing for the KitchenAid mixer will be announced on December 30th at 7:00opm.

10. All winners will be selected by Random.org. Each week the contest for the Meyer Lemon Tote and $25 giftcard will start fresh. Entries from the previous week will not be considered. The grand prize drawing pool will include all entries from the start of the contest on December 5th at 7:00amET through December 29th at 9:00pm ET.

Disclosure: I received the same products the winner will receive. The items were generously donated by Duda Farm Fresh Foods but the opinions and recipe expressed are entirely my own.