Tag: vodka

Cocktail of the Week: Blue Mule

2014-09-18 21.10.07

I needed an excuse for using my copper mugs so I poked around on the internet for ideas and tweaks of the Moscow Mule. I saw this blueberry syrup on something and thought it’d be neat to try in a Moscow Mule. So, I bought some blueberries cooked them down and strained them into a syrup and then I made some Mules! I called it a Blue Mule because that seemed the easiest, my first inclination was to call it a Mule of a Different Color but I don’t know how I feel about putting Wizard of Oz references into my drinks…

The ingredients
The ingredients

Blue Mule

  • 1 oz vodka
  • 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
  • 1 cup Ginger beer
  • 1/2 oz – 1 oz. blueberry syrup

Pour vodka, lime juice, and ginger beer into copper cup and stir. Add crushed ice to top of cup. Pour a small amount of blueberry syrup on top and stir again. Garnish with a lime wedge and blueberries.

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Wow! This was a good idea! To get the perfect blend of blueberry, lime and ginger you might have to play with the proportions some but it’s worth it! Also, you can adjust those three ingredients depending on which flavors you want to be strong or subtle. I put in a little bit more lime juice than 1/2 oz and a 1 oz of blueberry syrup and I thought it was just about perfect though. If you need a recipe for making blueberry syrup I’ve included one below.

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Blueberry Syrup

  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 cup water

Combine all into a small pot and bring to a boil for five minutes. Then lower temperature and simmer for another ten. Stir throughout or else you’re going to have a burned pot. Using a strainer or cheesecloth strain over a bowl and then cool.

Cocktail of the Week: Bloody Mary

2014-06-21 14.05.20

Summer means Gazpacho soup for dinner and Gazpacho means V8 juice. And when you have a container of V8 in the fridge it’s the most natural thing in the world to start thinking about Bloody Marys. The definitive morning cocktail.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Bloody Mary

  • 2 oz. vodka
  • 6 oz. tomato juice or V8
  • 2 dashes Worcestershire Sauce
  • 1 dash Sriracha  Sauce

Stir all together in an iced highball glass. Sprinkle celery salt on top. Garnish with celery.

2014-06-21 14.04.58

You’ll notice this recipe has one small alteration from the traditional recipe: Sriracha. We don’t keep, or use, Tabasco sauce in this house. I don’t know if there is anything I can say about the Bloody Mary that hasn’t been said before by a better writer. Spicy, fruity, and with lots of umami it’s like a meal in itself. Also, makes for a pretty good pick me up first thing in the morning on a weekend…

Cocktail of the Week: Pumpkin Patch

2013-09-29 18.54.27-2

Fall is here! That means either hot cocktails or appropriately Fall-ish cocktails. I was somewhat stumped as to what that entailed outside of hot toddies or Irish coffee until D reminded me that we’ve got this fabulous book, Fresh from the Market, that is full of seasonal recipes, including cocktails! I turned to the Fall section and looked over the cocktail recipes. This one stood out!

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Pumpkin Patch

  • 2 oz. Irish cream liquor
  • 1 1/2 oz. Vanilla Vodka
  • 1 oz. pumpkin syrup (we used a recipe from Annie’s Eats)
  • Freshly grated nutmeg

Combine Irish cream liquor, vodka, and pumpkin syrup in a cocktail shaker. Shake with ice and strain into martini glass. garnish with grated nutmeg.

2013-09-29 18.54.09-2As you can see from the picture of the we didn’t have fresh nutmeg so I ended up just sprinkling some of the spice over the drinks. Also, in the future D and I would like to take a stab at infusing vodka ourselves (vanilla, raspberry, pumpkin, etc.) but we just didn’t have time to do that this week before I made the cocktails… Maybe next time. Anyway, these cocktails taste amazing! Sweet, sugary, pumpkiny bliss! I’m not joking when I say this cocktail could take the place of dessert! I only made one for the each of us that we drank pre-dinner but both of us were immediately talking about making two more after dinner! By far the best cocktail I’ve made during this project.

If you’re looking for some seasonal fun with your cocktails you can’t go wrong with a Pumpkin Patch! If the rest of the seasonal cocktails I find are as good as this one I won’t end up pining for summer!

Cocktail of the Week: Seabreeze

Another refreshing drink for a hot summer day
Another refreshing drink for a hot summer day

Our bar is still pretty small. I’ve only been looking at cocktails with ingredients that we already have. So, my choices are a little limited until I start going out and expanding our liquor choices. With such a limited selection of I had to find a cocktail that was either vodka, rum, bourbon, or gin. Since the last two cocktails have had bourbon in them I wanted to avoid any cocktails with that as the main ingredient. I originally was interested going with that old standard, gin and tonic but, D vetoed it as not being sweet enough for her liking. Another search through the bartending guide and a few more vetoes left us with the Seabreeze.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Seabreeze

  • 1 1/4 oz vodka
  • 1 splash  of grapefruit juice
  • 1 splash of cranberry juice
  • ice cubes

Build the drink over ice in a highball glass or mason jars if you don’t have highball glasses…

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There were a few issues with this my construction of this cocktail. First, I purchased just cranberry juice, as in no added sugars or other juices. This was a mistake. Pure cranberry juice is very bitter and very sour and I would never, ever purchase this again. In the future I’ll make sure I use cranberry cocktail juice instead. Second, a splash is not very descriptive… I tried doing a splash of each as the directions indicated and ended up with hardly any cocktail and what was there was undrinkable. Some changes were going to have to be made!

Seabreeze False(b)logic edition

  • 1 1/4 oz vodka
  • 1 splash of cranberry juice
  • grapefruit juice
  • splash of simple syrup (optional)
  • ice cubes

Place ice in glass, pour in vodka and cranberry juice, fill glass with grapefruit juice.

This tweaked version turned out much better than the original! The fresh grapefruit juice really balanced out the tartness of the cranberry juice, if your grapefruit juice is not sweet enough, or you just like your cocktails sweeter a little simple syrup should help.

D loved this drink and wished we had a nice front porch on a beach house to be drinking them from… I promised to make them for her again as soon as I figure out how to get the beach house. I loved this cocktail. The seabreeze is simple, refreshing and delicious. For a summer evening I think I’d prefer these to a peach julep.

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