Summer Boardwalk

 The summer boardwalk cocktail is inspired by this Bath and Body Works fragrance:

 

About the fragrance

I was gifted this 3-wick candle in 2022. The 3-wick candle is not currently available online in this fragrance, but the single wick candle and wallflower fragrance plugin are available.

The scent notes listed for this fragrance are:

Caramel glazed popcorn

Warm taffy apples

Salty sweet cream

Designing the cocktail

I used half and half as the mixer to capture the sweet cream essence. For the first note, I used caramel vodka as well as caramel sauce for additional sweetness and visual effect. For the apple note, I used green apple vodka along with brown sugar apple simple syrup made using this recipe from myrecipes.com (originally from Southern Living.) I chose to add the simple syrup to account for the taffy note. I rimmed the glass in salt to capture the salty note.

Recipe

1 oz caramel vodka

1 oz apple vodka

1 oz apple brown sugar simple syrup

6 oz half and half

Salt

Caramel sauce

Combine caramel vodka, apple vodka, apple brown sugar simple syrup, and half and half in a glass or cocktail shaker. Rim two cocktail glasses with salt. Drizzle the inside of each glass with caramel sauce. Transfer mixture to cocktail glasses. For a non-alcoholic version, omit the caramel vodka and apple vodka.

The finished cocktail

 

  I enjoyed this cocktail. It would probably be categorized as a dessert cocktail due to its sweetness. The caramel flavor was the strongest, but apple flavor was detected too. The salt provided a contrast to the sweetness of the drink. I was concerned that it would be seem more appropriate for autumn than summer due to the apple note, but since caramel was the strongest note I believe it would be enjoyable any time of year, despite its name. My only concern was that the caramel sauce settled in the bottom of the glass before I could add the half and half mixture, preventing the ombre effect I observed in my Snowflakes and Cashmere cocktail. I made Snowflakes and Cashmere in the winter, when the caramel sauce was more viscous. I might be better able to achieve the ombre effect if I made Summer Boardwalk during colder temperatures as well, although the name would not be appropriate then. I would recommend this cocktail to any sweet tooth who likes caramel.