 // DRINKS
COCKTAILS
La Piscine des fleurs
Technically, the Piscine is not a cocktail, but rather a way of drinking your bubbly.
La Piscine des fleurs
Technically, the Piscine is not a cocktail, but rather a way of drinking your bubbly. Over the course of the Niçoise summer, one of my favourite sights on the Riviera is to see the grande dames of Nice ordering their platters of oysters and sipping Champagne on ice (or les Piscines). In this version, however, complete with a hollow orb of ice filled with edible flowers, the extra floral touch surely qualifies this beauty as a bona fide cocktail! And it’s just as good with an alluring de-alcoholised sparkling wine.
To make this drink you will need a sphere ice mould, a cake testing pen and a candle. Start off by first boiling the water that you plan to use for the ice sphere. This will ensure that the sphere will be clear and not cloudy. Carefully pour the boiled water into the sphere ice moulds and place them into the freezer for 2 hours. Then remove them from the freezer, when you remove the mould you will see that the outer layer of the sphere is frozen but the inside is still liquid. Light the candle and warm up the tip of the cake testing pen in the flame of the candle and pierce two small holes into the ice sphere. Simply place the ice sphere into a glass and pour a glass of bubbly.
How to get the flowers into the sphere
Pick all the petals off of a punnet of 10 g Violas. Roll up about 3 petals together at a time and squeeze them into the dome through the holes you pierced to pour the water out. If you struggle for the flower petals to go into the mould simply heat up the cake testing pen and run it through the same hole a few times to make it larger.Â
