"I’m not just a damsel in distress anymore! Just you watch." - Amy from Sonic Frontiers

Inspiration

Amy Rose, the hedgehog so named for her similarity to the flower (see, roses have thorns and hedgehogs have quills) gets a non-alcoholic highball interpretation drawing from her name and her flavor preferences. Sonic the Hedgehog The Official Cookbook by Victoria Rosenthal and Ian Flynn showcases a grapefruit-adjusted lemonade recipe that Amy describes as “a little sour, a little sweet, a little tart, and a lot of pink”. Well, Amy, I hope that this tart grapefruit and rose-flavored drink topped with soda water suits your preferences if you ever get the opportunity to try it (if you’ve got adult friends I’ve got a recipe with a boozy kick for them too!)

Workshopping

Removing the Alcohol

Much as the term “mocktail” implies, this recipe for Amy the Highball draws inspiration from the workshopping we did when crafting the alcoholic cocktail version. That version is very similar to this recipe, but with the alcoholic ingredients removed, and the non-alcoholic ingredients readjusted. We pulled inspiration from the “Piko Piko Slammer” recipe in the official Sonic the Hedgehog cookbook, essentially a grapefruit-boosted lemonade. To add our own spin to it, we added a homemade rose petal-infused simple syrup to bridge the gap between the official drinkspiration and our own take acknowledging Amy’s namesake. Adding a bit of grapefruit juice to the rose syrup (in a ratio of 2 parts rose syrup to 1 part grapefruit juice) results in a pretty tasty drink with soda, but to make it even better we adjust some of our ingredients.

The term “acid-adjusting” refers to adding some extra acids to fruit juice to boost its level of, well, acidity. This makes the juice more sour and therefore a more potent ingredient. To acid-adjust grapefruit juice for this recipe, and make it as sour as a lemon we add 4 grams of citric acid for every 100 milliliters of grapefruit juice. This helps to balance out all of the sweetness that is added from the rose petal syrup and makes this drink more sour than it is sweet. It also helps to give the juice the ability to cut through the dilution added by soda water. To make things even more complicated, we also add a bit of a particular syrup known as an oleo saccharum which is made by coating the peels of a grapefruit in sugar. This allows the sugar to extract all the oil from the peel and liquefy. The extra oleo saccharum adds a mildly bitter flavor that makes the drink taste more like a fresh grapefruit than without it. Here are a couple of reference summaries for making all the ingredients in this recipe just in case it isn’t clear!

1:1 (one-to-one) Rose Petal Syrup

• In a saucepan, combine equal weights of water and sugar (for example: 100 ml of water to 100 g of sugar)

• Heat the mixture up to a low simmer and stir until all of the sugar is dissolved.

  • Note that some of the water will turn to steam, so this syrup is a bit more than a 1:1 recipe. This makes it a bit sweeter and increases its shelf-life a bit.

• Add a handful of dried rose petals to the pot and steep the petals in the saucepan, covered for 10-15 minutes (or until you’ve reached you’re preferred level of rose flavor)

• Strain out the rose petals and bottle your syrup!

Acid-Adjusted Grapefruit Juice

• For every 100 ml of grapefruit juice

• Add 2 g of citric acid

• Stir to combine until the citric acid is completely dissolved

Grapefruit Oleo Saccharum

• Peel a grapefruit using a knife or a peeler, and weigh the peels in grams using a scale (when peeling, mind your pressure, the deeper you peel the more of the white pith will be removed, resulting in a more bitter syrup)

• For every gram of grapefruit peel, weight out the same weight in sugar

• Combine the peels and sugar in an airtight container and give it a shake to coat the peels.

• Store the container in a refrigerator for a few hours, or until you have the desired amount of liquid syrup. I typically leave it for about 24 hours.

Rosey Grapefruit Garnish

To top off Amy’s signature highball beverages, I literally spun up a garnish using the rind of one of the grapefruits used for juicing. To make one, make as long a peel of the grapefruit as you can using either a knife or a peeler. Begin rolling the peel in on itself while pinching at one of the sides. As you roll, you should notice it beginning to look more like a small cone than a cylinder. Keep rolling until the whole peel is used, and lock the peel in this shape with a cocktail skewer. Optionally, if you’ve got a small rosebud, you can wedge it into the center of the grapefruit flower.

Alcoholic Version

The alcoholic version of Amy the Hedgehog the Highball essentially dials back the volumes of the ingredients here and adds in a uniquely infused spirit, “white dog” whiskey. This is essentially whiskey (a grain-based distilled spirit) that has not been aged, which typically darkens its color and changes its flavor. We use a sous vide method of infusion to create a controlled environment much like a hot bag of tea and water, but the “tea” is grapefruit, the “water” is alcohol, and the “mug” is a vacuum-sealed, food-safe, plastic bag. These techniques can also be applied to non-alcoholic ingredients as well, so you might learn a bit over on that blog page.

Flavor Analysis

Sour and grapefruit forward with a bubbly undertone of rose. There is also mild bitterness much akin to a bite of a fresh grapefruit.