Brazilian Batidas
Posted by Sam on The Spirit World.
The first time I encountered batidas were in a college Spanish class.
If you have ever had the pleasure of studying another language you probably remember textbooks filled with ostensible scenes of the culture in which you are immersing yourself. These pictures always show people happily milling about the areas that need to be learned, and conveniently names of these areas and objects are labeled (in Spanish in my case). Usually most of the pictures are relatively easy to understand like a bus labeled “autobus”, but some are not so evident.
The picture for batidas was a couple walking down the street holding cups. Nobody knew what the term batidas was referring to, and our professor said “Oh, umm…I think it’s a milkshake”. Some time later I noticed a batidas recipe in Dale DeGroff’s Craft of the Cocktail, and most recently Jeffrey Morgenthaler has added one to his new cocktail menu at El Vaquero in Eugene, Oregon.
These adult milkshakes are actually a Brazilian concoction, as both batidas call for cachaca, which is the national spirit of Brazil. Many people are familiar with cachaca because it is also the main ingredient for the increasingly trendy Caipirinha.
If you have not tried cachaca, it is white rum distilled from fermented sugar cane juice, not molasses like many rums. The taste and smell is earthier and rougher than other white rums like Bacardi, but in a good way. If there are not many cachacas available where you live, you may be able to score an inexpensive bottle. The bottle I purchased, cinqüenta e um, was the only cachaca in the liquor store at $19 US for one liter.
The Caipirinha is a great way to experience cachaca for the first time, but in batidas the flavor really comes through nicely as well.
For this article, I used Dale DeGroff’s ratio of 2:2:1:1; cachaca, fruit, sweetened condensed milk, and sweetener. Blenders have a bad reputation with many mixologists, but I would recommend using one plus a handful of ice cubes to get it to a really smooth consistency, as sweetened condensed milk is thick and does not dissolve well in a cold beverage. I used homemade grenadine (just dissolve one cup sugar in two cups pomegranate juice and reduce to two cups of syrup) as a sweetener and blueberries for the fruit, and the results were great. Experiment with your own mix of ingredients depending on what you prefer or what is in season. Saúde!
Batidas
2 oz. cachaca
2 oz. fruit puree (I used blueberries)
1 oz. sweetened condensed milk
1 oz. syrup (I used grenadine, but simple syrup is fine)
