A Dry Rabbit original · Halloween
Lantern Sour
Roasted squash and ginger, shaken with lemon and rooibos until a silky, egg-free foam rises on top.
Alcohol-free. Nothing in it has alcohol.
Make it
You’ll need
- 1 oz (30 ml) roasted squash–ginger syrup
- 1 oz (30 ml) fresh lemon juice
- 1 oz (30 ml) strong rooibos tea, cooled
- ¾ oz (22.5 ml) aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas)
Garnish: Ground cinnamon, dusted over a paper jack-o'-lantern stencil held just above the foam.
Method
- Put the syrup, lemon juice, rooibos and aquafaba in an empty shaker and shake it as hard as you can for a full 15 seconds, to whip up the foam.
- Add ice and shake again until the shaker is frosty, about 10 seconds.
- Pour through a strainer and a fine tea strainer at once into a chilled coupe, and let the foam settle for a moment.
Rabbit’s note. Aquafaba whips like egg white and tastes of nothing. For strong rooibos, steep two bags in a cup of freshly boiled water, 5 minutes, then chill it.
Allergens and caffeine
- Contains chickpea (the aquafaba).
- No egg, dairy, nuts or gluten, and no caffeine: rooibos has none.
Get everything for it
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The tools
- Cocktail Kingdom Koriko Weighted Shaking Tins
- Fine mesh strainer
- Cocktail Kingdom Koriko Hawthorne Strainer
- Cocktail Kingdom Leopold Jigger
- Hand citrus press
The pantry
- Rooibos tea
- Demerara sugar
- Canned pumpkin purée
- Cinnamon sticks
- Whole allspice berries
Make ahead
- Roasted squash–ginger syrup. In a small pan, simmer 1 cup of roasted kabocha or pumpkin purée (canned pumpkin is fine) with 1 cup of water, ¾ cup of demerara sugar, a 1-inch piece of ginger, sliced, a cinnamon stick and 2 allspice berries for 10 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing gently. Keeps about 5 days in the fridge (our estimate).
From the store
Fresh lemon juice, Aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas).
Buying in person? See where to shop zero-proof around Boston.
The Weekly Hop. Every Thursday, the alcohol-free picks worth leaving the house for. Free.
How we checked it
Dry Rabbit originals are developed and checked with AI, against the 42 tested recipes in The Dry Rabbit Cocktail Guide: sweetness and acidity per ounce, sweet to sour, dilution and the drink’s size against drinks made the same way, every ingredient’s alcohol, and whether you can buy it. One that falls outside the book’s range is reworked before it’s published.
The check’s notes on Lantern Sour
Reworked. As approved (1¼ oz syrup, ¾ oz lemon) it measured sweetness 0.22 a finished ounce and sweet to sour 1.34, sweeter than any of the book's shaken sours (to 0.16 and 1.08). With 1 oz of syrup and 1 oz of lemon it's 0.18 and 0.83, in the middle of the book's sours, and 4.8 oz in a coupe after a dry shake and a shake on ice. The syrup's numbers are our estimate: ¾ cup of demerara in a cup each of water and purée comes out about four-fifths as sweet as simple syrup once it's strained. Aquafaba makes the foam, as it does in the book's sours, and rooibos adds body and a tea's dryness with no caffeine. Canned pumpkin, ginger, rooibos and a can of chickpeas are at any supermarket. 0.0%.
Made it? Tell us how it was: the best originals come back next season.
More to make
From our book, free on the site: The Burrow, Rabbit Punch, Harvey, Crepuscular, Winter Coat, Bog Hopper.