Birthday Punch

Want a punch that's going to, well, pack a punch? Well, I found one.

I found the recipe in O magazine. I'll be honest I was surprised to see one so boozy which is probably why I tore the page out to bring on vacation and make on my birthday - hence the name change.

1 medium seedless watermelon, halved and diced
1 pint blackberries
1 cup vodka
1 cup St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1/4 cup lime juice
1 750ml bottle of chilled Prosecco

Place the diced watermelon and blackberries on a lined cookie tray and freeze for at least 2 hours. Pour the vodka, liqueur, lime juice into punch bowl* (with ice if you wish), add frozen fruit and finally the prosecco. Keep enough fruit for a second, or even third batch.

*If you're in a vacation rental use what you can.

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!

Snow Day

 

It's snow day number a trillion and hundredity-six in this part of the world and it was definitely time to shake up something cool and refreshing, spring like even! After infusing the tequila I did the same with some fine Russian vodka (purchased especially to sip while watching the activities in Sochi)  and left that in the fridge for a few days. I then made some simple syrup with  lemon peel. I strained the peel from the vodka (tasted great!) and made this:

 

2oz Meyer lemon infused vodka

1oz Meyer lemon simple syrup

1oz fresh Meyer lemon juice

White of one egg

 

Mix all the ingredients with ice in shaker and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a twist of Meyer lemon - what else!

 

Here's to spring!

 

Ginger Bells

 

Ginger bells,  ginger bells, ginger all the way... ginger liqueur anyway.

Tree is up, there's snow outside there's nothing for it but take out the ginger and spice and start celebrating!

1 1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Domaine de Canton
1/4 oz St. Elizabeth All Spice liquor
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
Ginger beer to top

Shake first four ingredients in shaker with ice. Pour into chilled glass and top off with ginger beer (to taste). Now sit back and enjoy the hard work and a possible snow day tomorrow!

 

Speartini

 

We've had one or two (or more) drinks this year celebrating FSU's season but thought we needed to revisit the speartini. As good as it is, with the rum and cider it's more of a punch really so I wanted to glam it up a tad.

2 oz Prairie vodka
1 oz Lillet Rose
1/2 oz Pama Pomegranate liqueur
Squeeze of lime
Pomegranate seeds for garnish

Mix first four ingredients into shaker with ice and strain into chilled glass over seeds. Yum! Will be spending the rest of the season drinking this and researching appropriate 'bowl' drinks.

Bloody-tini

 

Gearing up for Halloween around here but this drink was actually inspired by all the rain last weekend - which really begs for (well, ok, begs me) to have a bloody Mary (or Maria) first thing.

I held out till the evening and made this instead.

2oz Stollichnaya Stolli Hot (Hot pepper vodka)
1/2 Molly Prat dry vermouth
1 oz bloody Mary mix
A squeeze of lime
Old bay seasoning for rimming the glass (rub lime around glass and turn upside down on saucer of old bay)

Mix all in cocktail shaker with ice and pour into rimmed cocktail glass. Bloody hot and bloody good.

Government Shutdown

 

This government shutdown is nothing but inspiring - in a glass that is.

2oz Absolute Citroen infused with tea*
1 tsp lemon juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Tonic water to taste
Lemon slice for garnish

Mix first 3 ingredients together with ice and shake (if consensus is reached you've shaken it for too long). Pour into a chilled glass and top with tonic water.

There's nothing sweet about this drink and it definitely needs a good dose of tonic. Or a good kick in the pants.

*You know this drink is going to happen so steep a tea bag in 8 oz of vodka and after 4 hours or so and keep the infused vodka in the freezer for future emergencies.

Seashells she sells

 

Yes, we're still at the beach and this is what you make from what's left of the bar on the second to last night.

2 parts vodka
1/2 part grapefruit juice
2 drops grapefruit bitters
2 parts tonic water (or to taste)
1/2 part Tres Agaves margarita mix (to sweeten it a tad - grapefruit juice, tonic water and bitters funnily enough made it really bitter)

Stir in whatever container you have to hand and pour over ice in a chilled glass. Sip it while waiting on your friend to come back with a box of freshly steamed crab.

Yes, it's going to be hard to leave.

Watermelon Basil Daiquiri

 

Watermelon, so sweet and refreshing and so delicious with rum. I've seen variations of this drink for a while now and I'm sure you can replace the rum with vodka (just don't call it a daiquiri!).

This makes enough for 4 drinks
1/4 good sized watermelon cut into cubes and pureed in blender with 16-20 basil leaves. Strain into mixing jug/shaker
8 oz white rum like Bacardi
4 tbsp. fresh lime juice
4 tbsp. simple syrup


Mix them all up (or shake) and pour over lots of ice. If you were making just one at a time - muddle the watermelon and basil in bottom of shaker, add ice and rest of ingredients and then strain before serving.

Serve with a thin slice of frozen watermelon and basil leaf.

This is what summer tastes like.

Nogroani

Equal parts vodka, Campari and Solerno stirred with ice. An orange twist would be nice.
There is no end to the ways a Negroni can come together.

Sour Note

1 part Bourbon

1/2 part simple syrup

1/2 part freshly squeezed lemon juice

I made a batch of simple syrup recently and added some finely grated lemon peel to the pot to give it an extra citrus flavor. Haven't stopped mixing it with everything yet. We were getting back to basics the night we made a whiskey sour with the syrup and freshly squeezed lemon juice and it tasted so good we wondered why we don't order these more often. Actually if we knew a bar person made his/her own simple syrup and squeezed their own fruit we probably would.

 

Vodka sour = short lemonade = perfect start to summer

Make it the same as above just replace the bourbon with vodka. Now go try it with gin, rum, tequila, moonshine, etc...  

Tom's Medley

 

Tom knows only a smattering of lines from a few songs and strings them together in a fashion all his own. It gets a sing-song going and takes the party up a notch. We call it “Tom’s Medley’.  He visited us recently and I knew I had to have a cocktail with this name; and I worked with the guidelines of it having Jack Daniels (his favorite tipple) and a smattering of a few other libations so I started with many a barman’s nightmare - the Long Island Ice Tea.

This is what we had. And then we had another one. Doesn’t look pretty but neither did we after a few more…

1 oz Jack Daniels bourbon

¼ oz gin

¼ oz vodka

¼ oz white rum

¼ oz triple sec

¼ oz fresh lime juice

¼ oz orange juice

Splash of cola

Blooditini

Himself picked up a bottle of Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur at the weekend (we're suckers for a good looking bottle!) and with it being his birthday yesterday I knew it had to feature in a little something something once the kid was in bed. Handily enough, we also had blood oranges in - I love these bitter sweet fruits and adore their color. Drink wasn't bad either by the way.

1 1/2 - 2 parts Absolute Citron
1/2  - 1 part Solerno
1 part freshly squeezed blood orange juice

Shake it up with ice and serve in a cocktail glass. 


 

Shamrock Shake

Thanks to social media my curiosity was piqued this week by a Shamrock Shake – I never had one of the famed beverages so can’t quite prove how this adult version compares but I can tell you I was surprised at how good it was. Really surprised!

1 part vanilla vodka

½ part Bailey’s Irish cream

½ part crème de menthe*

Half and Half or milk - add to your own taste

* The green kind to get the green color. If you have the clear version – add a drop of green food coloring.

Shake all the ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with ice. You could always mix them in the blender but then it would be called a Shamrock Blend and that wouldn’t be quite right.

Mystery Cheer

 

I made this drink over the holidays and I was getting tired of still seeing the pictures in my camera roll so I thought it was time to share it with you. And it was good too. You’d like it. I got it from My Year in Cocktails (a Christmas gift) but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what was in it apart from the rosemary and grapes which sadly are not ingredients listed in the index nor the contents drink names. When I finally found it - and it ended I had to go through each.and.every.drink (see what I do for drink you?) it was called Christmas Cheer which you will correctly assume was towards the end of the book. Remember I made it around the holidays? Yeah! I should have remembered that.

Great drink but likely to erase any memory you ever had of drinking it. I recommend it obviously!

About 5 fresh grapes (or 1oz grape juice)

2 oz vodka

1 oz fresh lemon juice

¼ oz agave syrup

1 egg white

Rosemary sprig for garnish

Muddle the grapes at the bottom of the cocktail shaker and add the rest of the ingredients and shake well before pouring into cocktail glasses. You can strain the grapes out if you wish. Or just strain the whole drink out of your memory! 

Vesper

 

Of course I'd have a cocktail ready for our Oscar viewing pleasure and when I heard there was a Bond thing happening well it was an easy decision to make - the Vesper martini.

1oz vodka
3 oz gin
1/2 oz Lillet blanc
Orange twist

And yes, shaken not stirred.
 

Raven Cheer

It's a sporting weekend - the Six Nations tournament kicks off tomorrow and there's the Super Bowl on Sunday which was what we were prepping for with this drink as we'll be supporting the Baltimore Ravens. Come Sunday evening we will not only be wearing the black and purple of the team, but we'll be drinking it too.

For these drinks you will need to play with the ingredients below - I was getting various results as you can see from the pictures but am happy to report that nothing was wasted in the making of this drink. It is based on a Cosmo with the colors blue and red making purple. You can make it long (and I suggest this as football can go on a bit!) or short & strong (if you want an early exit from the game and pass out on the couch, which yes, I have done with football on the TV).

Vodka
Blue Curacao (add this little by little like a food dye!)
Lime juice
Cranberry cocktail juice
Ice

GO RAVENS!

This one ended up black!

Ginger Wisp

Look what I whipped up in Wisp last weekend? It’s a riff on drink called the White Orchid found here

2 parts Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

1 part Absolut Citron

2 parts white cranberry juice

Lemon juice

White of an egg

For four cocktails I used the juice of half a lemon and the white of one egg. I didn’t have a cocktail shaker with me so I whisked it all together in a blender and got some really fluffy egg whites.

What was I thinking not traveling with a cocktail shaker?

Classy shot with the pot holder and tea towel.

Snowtini

Snow is on our minds this week though there's none on the ground (what's up with that weather man?); we're also heading for the slopes this weekend so it put me in the mood to make something snowy. Or at least something white and this is what I made with what I had on hand:

2oz Rum with coconut liqueur (Malibu)

½ oz pineapple flavored vodka

1 ½ oz pineapple juice

Splash of half and half

Dab a little pineapple juice on the rim of the glass and dip it in shredded coconut

The splash of half and half is to add the white snowy color and doesn’t make it too sickly sweet (or add too many calories) like a creamy liqueur or coconut cream might and the flavor comes from the liquor instead– just the way we like it.

This could also be called a Snow Colada as in ‘it’s no pina colada’! It’S NO. Get it?

I’m hilarious.

Clementini

Clementines, mandarins and tangerines are like little pieces of sunshine in a fruit bowl so why not celebrate them in a martini glass too. This drink was kicked off with an impulse purchase at Trader Joe's but the clementine soda isn't absolutely necessary for this at all.

2 parts Absolut Citron
1 part St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 tsp lemon or lime juice
Juice of one clementine Splash of Clementine flavored soda - optional Garnish with a thin slice of clementine

Makes January easier somehow.