Dubonnet Gin Cocktail and Thank You

Made from French fortified wine marketed under the name Dubonnet and a good London gin,  this refreshing libation is well known for being the favorite tipple of the late Queen Mother and her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. 

Like the queen, this blog has two birthdays. The first one was just a few weeks ago marking the date I created Food Lust People Love as a Tumblr blog. It didn’t take me long to realize that Tumblr, at least in its native form, didn’t work for what I wanted to achieve with this blog so I changed over to Blogger and I added the 12 Tumblr posts all in one day – 24 June 2011, to be precise. So that’s the official blog birthday I celebrate each year.

My very first post is still one of my favorites. It wasn’t even a recipe, but a series of photos from a recent trip we had taken to Italy of the market in Florence. I want to live there! Who's coming with me?

That said, my early food photos are laughably bad. Post number two was a delicious dessert made with whipped cream, meringues and blackberries. With the ugliest photo. I’m not kidding. And yeah, I’m going to make you go look if you really want to because it’s just too awful to add again here. *Shudder*

Without further ado, I’d like to share a cocktail with you that I raise in thankful salute to all the people who have supported me in this three-year journey. To my family and close friends first and foremost, for putting up with my experiments, for waiting to eat while I take photos of the food and for allowing me to tell their stories and share their photos on occasion. To my fellow bloggers who have taught me so much about food photography, website optimization and social media with generosity of spirit and endless camaraderie. And finally, to you, my readers. You leave me kind comments and send me recipe suggestions. You share links to my posts with your own friends and family. You give me great joy and it is my privilege to meet you in this space. Thank you!

As I was researching this drink, I found recipes that varied depending on whether it was the Queen Mother who was drinking it or Queen Elizabeth, the former preferring more gin than Dubonnet and the latter preferring more Dubonnet than gin, so feel free to mix yours however you like. I went with Queen Elizabeth’s two-to-one proportions.

Ingredients
Twist of lemon and lime peel
2 oz or about 60ml Dubonnet
1 oz or about 30ml good quality gin
Ice (The queen reportedly likes three cubes of ice. What is it with the British and their dislike of ice?!)

Method
Add the twists of lemon and lime to your glass along with the ice.

Measure in the Dubonnet and gin.

Cheers! And, once again, thank you so much for your support!

Not Your Usual Recipe Post

Victoria here, barging into my mother's territory to bring her (and you, dear reader. I like you) the warmest of birthday-morning wishes. Mommy, you are the most beautiful person and I love you so, so much and I wish I could be with you today. Make yourself some coffee (just kidding, I know you will).

P.S. Bar's open. 

Birthday Party Pancake Muffins #MuffinMonday

Perfect for whatever your celebrations, these Birthday Party Pancake Muffins have all the flavor of chocolate chip pancakes but are much easier to make and serve! Bake some today!

 

Our Muffin Monday recipe for today was a pancake muffin with maple syrup and a streusel topping.   Which sounded delightful. But at our house, the pancake of choice, especially when the girls had slumber parties, always included either little chocolate chips or mini M&Ms and not a drizzle of syrup.   So I decided that if I were going to make pancake muffins, I’d better do it right.

I was baking these on Saturday in preparation for posting on Monday and we were indeed celebrating a birthday, although, sadly, without a gaggle of giggling girls sleeping over. And I learned a new term: Golden Birthday. I guess the whole world knows what that is but I had never heard it before. 

It was my elder daughter’s Golden Birthday, which means that she turned 22 on the 22nd.  It also means that my grandmother is now 99 years old! 

She and my daughter share a birthday and a special bond, as she was the first great-grandchild. So I offer you these special birthday party pancake muffins in celebration of two very special birthdays. Perhaps there is someone in your family that needs celebrating too? Make them these!

Birthday Party Pancake Muffins

This recipe is adapted from one on Bakingdom, a recipe blog that is no longer online. The link above is from the Wayback Machine where you can still see the original post. If you were a follower and are curious about what happened to Bakingdom, check out this post from BakingHow.

Ingredients
For the muffins:
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour
1/4 cup or 50g vanilla sugar (or 1/4 cup sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 180ml buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
3/4 cup or 150g mini M&Ms

For the topping:
1/4 cup or 50g mini M&Ms
1/2 cup or 115g Nutella

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Grease and flour a 12-cup muffin pan or fill it with paper liners.


Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together your buttermilk, eggs, butter and vanilla (if using.)

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until just combined.

Fold in the first lot of mini M&Ms.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups and bake about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool for about five minutes then remove the muffins from the pan and cool completely on a rack.

Fill a decorating bag with Nutella and pipe it all over the muffins.  (If you don’t have a decorating bag, put the Nutella in a Ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole in one corner.)

Top with the second lot of mini M&Ms.  Now don't those looks just like a party, but for breakfast?

Enjoy!

Pin these Birthday Party Pancake Muffins!

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