3-Ingredient Happy Hour: A Sidecar Named Desire

Happy weekend, everyone, and welcome back to 3-Ingredient Happy Hour, the weekly drink column featuring super simple yet delicious libations. This week we’re featuring a cocktail from Maggie Hoffman’s The One-Bottle Cocktail, a book that very much fits the aesthetic of this column.

Photo: Kelly Puleio (The One-Bottle Cocktail)

First developed by Laura Bellucci of New Orleans’ SoBou, this drink is a juicy, fruity play on the sidecar cocktail which, as we well know, is very rifflable. Good, sugar-sweetened apricot jam is the key to making this baby sing, so skip the cheap stuff and treat yourself. I love a good jam cocktail, and this is a very good jam cocktail. To make it, you will need:

• 60mL cognac
• 3 tablespoons really good apricot jam
• 15mL fresh lemon juice, with a piece of the lemon zest set aside (a lemon counts as one ingredient)

Combine everything in a shaker filled with ice and shake until well chilled – Hoffman recommends about 12 seconds. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a chilled coupe glass, and express the oils from the zest over your beverage. If you feel like throwing some cocktail bitter in there for extra depth, you can. I won’t even tell anyone that you violated the three-ingredient rule.