Singapore Sweetheart

This was the cocktail I made for Valentine's day.  I wanted to name it for my boyfriend but unfortunately my pet name for him is singapore sling and that name is already taken by another cocktail, but I digress. I've never had a problem with consuming raw egg whites so it's probably safe to risk it if you want (except for pregnant women and young children and since this is a cocktail, they shouldn't be drinking it anyway).  Still I prefer the pasteurized egg whites that come in a carton because they are easier to measure and tend to be more liquid-y so they mix into the drink easier.

1/4 oz Chambord
2 oz Litchi (lychee) juice
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1 oz Vodka
1 oz Egg Whites

1. combine all the ingredients in a shaker and dry shake (that is shake without ice) for 45 seconds, add in ice and continue to shake until the outside of the shaker is ice cold.  Strain into a chilled glass.

Spring Kimono

Sometimes I wonder how much my love of yuzu is because it actually taste that good or the novelty of a new citrus fruit plays a roll.  Anyhoo, this drink is particularly refreshing.

3 oz vodka
1 oz yuzu juice
1/2 oz lillet
about 1 inch piece of cucumber, cut into quarters

1. muddle the the cucumber to let out the juices.
2. add in the remaining ingredients, strain, serve on the rocks.

Kalimotxo Sangria

This is a combination of 2 Spanish drinks based around wine.  Everyone knows about sangria but kalimotxo is something I stubbled upon on the internet, it's a mix of red wine and coke which at first sounded disgusting but I had to try it and it ended up being pretty good.  This would be great for a little get together with some friends especially since its pretty low alcohol content.  I'd recommend using mexican coke for this (and for any cocktail that uses coke for that matter).  It's made with normal sugar instead of corn syrup; it's not any healthier than american coke, but it's not sickly sweet.  A lot of grocery stores, particularly in areas with high latino/hispanic populations, carry it. You'll normally find it in glass bottles that are a little taller/ stretched out than normal glass coke bottles (when in doubt just check the ingredient list to see that it says sugar instead of corn syrup).

2 parts red wine
1 part pomegranate juice
2 parts Mexican Coke
frozen cherries

1. mix together all of the ingredients in a pitcher. Serve with ice.

The Pyrus Punch

My dad told me about when he was younger he'd spend some of his summers in Germany where the kids would drink this stuff made from equal parts beer and sprite, that got me thinking about mixing beer with soda to make a sweet, low alcohol punch. Pyrus is the scientific name for pear; Keith and I were really stumped with coming up with a name and pyrus just sounded cool (evidently its also a bakugan).

8 oz harpoon IPA
6 oz ginger ale
2 oz pear brandy
2 dashes Fee Brothers Old Fashion Bitters

1. pour all the ingredients into a glass. you can do this over ice, but I prefer to just make sure the beer and ginger ale are thoroughly chilled.  If you multiply this recipe to make a whole pitcher you might wanna think about freezing whole pears or chunks to use as ice cubes

Guinness Chocolate Milk Shake

I kept hearing about milkshakes like this and always wrote them off as just sounding gross but then I had an Irish Car Bomb when Keith's room mate turned 21 and suddenly it didn't seem quite so absurd.  This recipe makes a blender full so have some friends over and have a good time.

1 container of chocolate ice cream (14 oz)
1 1/3 cups guinness
1/4 cup Bailey's

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender and, you know, make a milkshake. garnish with whip cream or a sprinkle of coco powder

Chocolate Egg Cream

This recipe developed from me wanting an egg cream but not having any chocolate syrup so I macgyver-ed up some with honey and coco powder which ended up being way better than hersey's.  This way you can use better quality coco powder than they'd use in the pre-made syrup. It's important to use dutch-processed (also called sweetened) otherwise it'll be too acidic. You can use any honey but the orange blossom does go quite nicely.  If you want it to be non-acoholic, replace the kahlua with coffee and just leave the vodka out.


1 tbsp dutch-processed coco powder
1 tbsp orange blossom honey
1 tbsp kahlua
1/3 cup milk
2/3 cup seltzer
vodka to taste (I do 2 tbsp)

1. in a glass mix the coco powder and kahlua with a fork or small whisk until smooth, stirring in the honey, then milk and vodka.
2. add in ice and stir
3. in a chilled glass add in the seltzer and pour in the coco/milk mixture. serve with a orange spiral.

Lemon Buttermilk Fizz

This recipe is based off of a lemonade recipe from Miss Aimee's tea room, a place I've never been but I really like this recipe.  It seemed so weird I figured it had to be good.  It doesn't actually use buttermilk, but adding lemon to milk to make it curdle is a common substitute for buttermilk.  And the best part is that this lemony drink doesn't require you to squeeze or muddle a single lemon.

4 lemons, cut into chunks
2 cups sugar
4 cups milk (2%)
seltzer
vodka

1. roughly mix the lemon chunks and sugar in a bowl, you aren't really muddling but don't be gentle. let sit for 30 minutes, stirring again halfway through.
2. mix in the milk and let sit for an hour.
3. chances are the milk will curdle, go from opaque to simply cloudy with little white blobs floating in it, no problem; just use a colander or a slotted spoon to fish out the lemon pieces and seeds (don't use a mesh strainer, it's too fine and will remove the curds as well). transfer to a blender and blend for about 30-45 seconds or until it has re-homogenized.
4. pour seltzer over ice in a glass, pour in an equal amount of the milk mixture, and then add in vodka to taste. it's best to pour the seltzer in the glass before the milk mixture or the proteins in the milk will strengthen the bubbles formed when the seltzer is poured and you'll get a huge head on your drink.

The Weasley

This cocktail uses the pumpkin juice recipe I previously posted. The first time I made it, I used some fire whiskey I made, but it was too much. I think the name is sorta clever, since the Weasleys were all gingers and wizards, so a cocktail with ginger ale and pumpkin juice makes sense.

2 oz dark rum
2 oz pumpkin juice
2-3 oz ginger ale
2 dashes of reagan's orange bitters

1. Combine the rum, pumpkin juice, and bitters in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake.
2. Strain into a chilled glass and top with the ginger ale.

Jittery Haiku

I have a really hard time coming up with cocktail names. I mean dishes are easy, if I sauté pork and scallions I call it sautéed pork with scallions, I braise some beef, I call it braised beef, but that formula doesn't really work with cocktails.  You wouldn't call a martini "gin with vermouth."  Anyhoo, not to brag, but I feel like I nailed it with this one.  This drink has 3 ingredients, one of which is Japanese, and a haiku is a Japanese poem with 3 lines.  Jittery for the coffee liqueur; I'm fairly proud of myself.  Regardless this is pretty delicious. You can get yuzu juice in bottles at Japanese grocery stores or online.

2 oz vodka
3/4 oz kahlua
1/2 oz yuzu juice

1. Stir all the ingredients together with ice. Strain into a chilled glass.  Garnish with a lemon spiral (if you can get fresh yuzu, no need to waste the zest on a garnish)

Rose Toad

In Singapore they make a drink flavored with rose syrup and calamansi, a citrus fruit I've never heard of before.  In place of calamansi, I used a lemon/ lime combo.  They're garnished with holy basil seeds that, when soaked in water, look like tadpole eggs.  Since the alcohol makes this an adult drink, I decided to garnish it with an adult frog (actually it's because I got a frog-shaped candy mold for christmas and wanted to make frog shaped ice cubes).  You by no means need the frog ice to make this drink delicious but it certainly makes it cuter.

1 tbsp rose syrup

1/4 cup water

1/4 lime

1/4 lemon

1/2 clementine/mandarin orange*

1/4 cup orange juice

gin or vodka to taste

*This blew my mind but evidently clementines are simply a type of mandarin orange, weird huh? Never thought of clementines as exotic.

1. Muddle the lime, lemon, and clementine.

2. Add the orange juice, water, rose syrup, and gin/vodka.

3. Strain and serve in an old fashion glass and serve on the rocks, and on the rocks here means frog shaped rocks.

I know it's cheating but I couldn't think of a good trick to make the ice cubes green so I use food coloring.

Vodka Martini

There is nothing I like more than simply sitting around sipping cocktails and what cocktail is more classic and classy than the martini? Unfortunately I could never drink them because I'm not a huge fan of olives until I found out that some people drink them with a twist of lemon, people like James Bond no less.  I was drinking such a martini at this black tie thing I went to with my dad when this photographer compared me to James Bond, very proud of that.  But I digress... Anyhoo, with a cocktail this simple it's the little details that matter, like using good vodka.  Now you can fix not-so-good vodka by running it through a brits pitcher a few times but just go out and buy some tito's, it's worth it.  The bitters aren't very standard (but nowadays neither is the vermouth, most bars where I order a vodka martini end up serving me a cold glass of vodka), but apparently in the 1800's bitters were a standard part of a martini and I like to really drive the lemon part home.

3 oz tito's vodka

1 oz dry vermouth

1 dash fee brothers lemon bitters (optional)

lemon zest twist to garnish plus more

1. place a martini/cocktail glass in the freezer to chill the glass. this isn't necessary if you're serving it on the rocks, but half the fun of drinking a martini is it looking like a martini which means serving it straight up

2. fill a cocktail shaker with ice and the vermouth, shake to coat the ice and then dump out the excess vermouth. I don't like my martinis too dry so I don't try too hard to get all the vermouth out.

3. add in the vodka and the bitters if using, shake for 15-30 seconds and pour into the chilled glass. now if you wanted to make a standard martini, you would just switch the vodka out for gin. I'd stir the gin one instead of shake it though; shaking makes a drink much colder than stirring, and gin shouldn't be served that cold.

4. to form the garnish, harvest the zest from a lemon with a vegetable peeler, you're looking to get it about 2 1/2 inches long. try not to get too much of the white pith (if you do get some you can scrap it off with a knife or just leave it, it's not a big deal). use a pair of kitchen shear or a knife to cut it into a strip let's say 3/16 of an inch wide or so.  then wrap the strip around a chopstick or narrow handle of a wooden spoon to make it a spiral.

5. the final touch, take the scraps of lemon zest and either bruise them by twisting them to get the essential oils flowing or if you are doing this in front of your friends and wanna get fancy, hold the lemon peel up to a lighter for a few seconds, and rub the oils around the inside of the rim of the glass so when you take a sip you get hit with the lovely aroma of lemon.