"Bleck! That awful sound! It... sounds like a cricket! How did you know?"

The mighty dragon in the tall castle feared for her power and strength. Rumor has it that she'll eat you alive if you try and take her treasure. She may even get bored all of a sudden, and decide to eat you anyways! The horror! Could a beast such as her have a weakness? Why, yes! Like my own aversion to the sound of silverware scraping together, Hooktail's weakness is the sound of chirping crickets.

Inspiration

Hooktail's my most nostalgia-recognizable boss from the Paper Mario series next to Fracktail from Super Paper Mario. There's something about slaying a dragon that really sticks with ya as a child. Since Hooktail fears the sound of crickets, it made sense to start there and work backward from a drinks perspective. 

A younger me once approached a bartender and asked her (rather frivolously) to make me the "weirdest drink she could". I was met with a green and creamy drink called a Grasshopper. Why not do a riff on a Grasshopper then? I mean, grasshoppers and crickets are a part of the same order (orthoptera specifically!) Our take for Hooktail was to modify the Grasshopper cocktail to be more cinnamon-forward and red since she is a fire-breathing, red dragon.

Flavor Analysis

If you're one to frequent a cinnamon-dusted latte, then you'll feel similar to how I felt sipping and workshopping this drink. The cinnamon notes are carried so well by the creamy texture imparted by, you guessed it, the heavy cream. The mint and cocoa are as timeless a combination as ever. What really gets me here is how the spice from the cinnamon components supports the mint and chocolate. It all reminds me of those chocolate candy canes that you can get around the holiday season. Just the right amount of spice (either from the peppermint in a candy cane, or the cinnamon in this cocktail). At first, I was a little worried about including any more than a few dashes of Angostura bitters for color, but having tested a few different measures for this one the quarter oz pour gave the right balance between flavor and color.

The Stencil

To create the stencil used for disbursing the cinnamon garnish, I used a Cricut Joy cutting machine to cut Hooktail's face onto a piece of paper. The image I used is an inverted copy of Hooktail's face which you may use freely here! If you have trouble getting things to work, give me a holler and I'd be happy to walk you through how to do it.