House of Friends

House of Restlessness more like. It was a wet day or a snow day or something - definitely a day when we were stuck inside and we needed to release some energy with the kid.

1.5 oz Tequila blanco
1/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1/4 oz Cointreau
1oz Agave Nectar
1 oz Fresh squeezed lime juice

Add all ingredients to shaker and fill with ice. Shake vigorously, and strain into a cocktail glass. Got the recipe here.

Paddington

I've long been fan of a little bear called Paddington so I knew I couldn't miss the movie but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did - so much that we got the marmalade out when we got home and created this. Taken from a recipe in the winter Imbibe magazine but where they used homemade lemon/grapefruit marmalade we added a little grapefruit juice to compensate.

1 1/2 oz Hennessay Cognac
3/4 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz Fresh Meyer Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
1 tsp Orange Marmalade
Meyer Lemon peel for garnish

Shake all the ingredients together 'dry' first (without ice) to 'dissolve' the marmalade. Add ice to chill and strain  into  chilled cocktail glasses. You might want to spoon some of the marmalade bits into the glasses too. 

Proceed to stick your snout in and guzzle it down Paddington style.

Clausapolitan

While himself was busy mixing up a batch of molasses cookies I got busy mixing something equally festive to imbibe with them. I revisited my molecular cocktail kit of which the only successful thing we created was a foam using soy lecithin; and I made a more citrus, more cranberry cosmo with a lime foam. Went down well (as did the cookies).


1 part Absolut Citron
1/2 part Cointreau
1 part Cranberry Juice Cocktail
1-2 dashes Snappy Lime Bitters

Lime foam:
3/4 cup lime juice, 3/4 cup water/ 1 sachet soy lecithin, whisked until frothy.


Stir first four ingredients with ice in separate container and strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Spoon the lime foam on top. Garnish with cranberries.

Santa Claus might prefer this over milk this year!

Blonde Irish

Is it too late for a St. Patrick's Day cocktail? Never!

Being from Ireland and blonde, I liked the name of this cocktail Irish Blonde and we had all the ingredients on hand - well near enough anyway. It called for Michael Collins blended Irish whiskey - we had Jameson, Orange Curaçao, we only had the blue one but we had Cointreau, La Ina Fino Sherry? A dry cooking sherry might suffice and only Angostura orange bitters. For garnish, we had clementines but no oranges and instead of a flamed orange peel we went with a twist after nearly burning the tips of our fingers.

I guess when you look at it we had none of the ingredients (hence the slight change in name) but we did have the chilled martini glasses and the right thirst for whiskey.

2 oz Michael Collins Blended Irish Whiskey

.75 oz Orange Curaçao

.25 oz La Ina Fino Sherry

1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters

Garnish: Flamed orange peel

Glass: Martini

Ghost Crab

 

 

We came up with the name before we came up with the drink so using the collective supply on hand we came up with this:

 

2oz Tres Agaves Tequila

1/2 oz Cointreau

Freshly squeezed lime juice

White of an egg

Shake in a tumbler with strain into glass over ice.

Optional: To enjoy when the sun goes down pour into a plastic cup, get a flashlight and bring the kids to the beach to look for ghost crabs. Ah yes, we love summer.

 

Grateful o'punch

Pre-stuffing our faces on Thanksgiving we had a little ol' cocktail made up of the following:

1/4 - 1/2 cup ginger/rosemary syrup (1/cup water, 1/2 cup sugar with about 5 thin slices of fresh ginger and sprigs of rosemary, boiled till sugar is disolved, let cool and strain)
1 cup of Cointreau
2 cups Pomegranate Juice
Bottle of Prosecco
Serve with ice and orange slices and rosemary

It's great to be grateful.

White Poinsettia

Last year my sister, Siobhan, introduced me to a cocktail called Poinsettia and I served it a few times over the holiday season and it always went down very well. A little too well in fact when you’re drinking it and trying to get dinner on the Thanksgiving table. I believe I even served it here.

Here’s the recipe (direct from Europe with metric units!)

125 ml Cointreau
500 ml Ocean Breeze Cranberry Juice
1 bottle of Prosecco

Mix together (it’s best if the juice and Prosecco are well chilled) and pour into champagne flutes over some frozen cranberries. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

Some time over the summer I replaced the red cranberry juice with a white one (we had lots left over after this cocktail) and it took the Christmas out of it if you know what I mean. I served it poolside and again it went down well. Some frozen raspberries would have been great in this. While this cocktail is great to serve company, I doubt myself and himself would have trouble drinking it all to ourselves.