For me, Halloween marks the official start of the holiday season. So let’s celebrate the spirit of the season with some seasonal spirits, shall we?
We all love to have a drink for the holidays, many prefer to opt fot beer, and now the popular thing is to actually work with draft beer system installers to get the best beer possible. But today we will be talking about cocktails and Here are 4 Halloween-themed cocktail recipes that will get your holiday season off to a spirited start.
Halloween Cocktail Recipe #1 – Persephone Returns to Hades
Any drink that involves a muddler deserves a long name just so people are aware of how much work goes into the dang thing. Plus, with winter approaching, the myth of Persephone and her underworld lover is fitting.
Ingredients:
1 part pomegranate juice
1 ½ parts gin or vodka
¾ part grenadine or simple syrup
2-3 mint or basil leaves
squeeze of fresh lime
To make: Add mint or basil leaves to glass, cover with grenadine. Muddle together. Add ice and remaining ingredients. Shake until chilled.
Serve with a cocktail straw in a high or lowball glass. Garnish with mint or basil leaves, cherry, mini plastic pitchfork or other hellish decorations.
Halloween Cocktail Recipe #2 – Bitches’ Brew
Ingredients:
port wine straight out from one of your premium wine coolers
stout beer
To make: Fill glass 1/3 of the way with port. Fill remainder of glass with chilled stout.
Serve in a lowball glass or stemmed glass.
Halloween Cocktail Recipe #3 – Queen of the Damned
Ingredients:
1 part raspberry vodka OR vodka + raspberry liqueur
1 part coffee liqueur
2 parts champagne
red sugar for rim
To make: Shake first two ingredients together with ice, strain and serve in a martini glass rimmed with red sugar or with bloody candy rim. Fill rest of glass with champagne. Garnish with slice of blood orange (optional).
Halloween Cocktail Recipe #4 – Cool Autumn Breeze
Ingredients:
1 part gold rum
1 part sweet tea
splash of sour mix
squeeze of lemon
To make: Combine all ingredients in a lowball glass over ice. Stir well. Garnish with lemon or orange wedge.
cheers,
k
sipping mummy photo by: Passetti, on Flickr
Sour mix? Seriously?
That’s what I call living the good life.
How about apple pucker? Or whipped cream vodka?
hm. no thanks. i’ll stick with the sour mix. i like to make mine from scratch, though given your stated preferences, i’d make sure to put the nice bottled stuff in your drink.
you do bring up a good point though, however inelegantly.
the bright yellow stuff sold in bottles at grocery and liquor stores really isn’t worth using. i’m no fan of any pre-packaged cocktail mixes (i also eschew bloody mary, sangria, and margarita mixes), but, being a true lush, i’ll never turn down a drink just because it uses a pre-packaged mixer. 😉
when making my own sour mix, i use equal parts fresh lemon juice, fresh lime juice and sugar then stir them all together until the sugar dissolves. when i’m making a big batch, i toss the ingredients in a small pot and heat slowly on the stovetop until the sugar dissolves. some homemade sour mixes call for egg white. i don’t get that fancy.
of course, there are those who wouldn’t want to take the extra time to whip up some sour mix for 1 or 2 cocktails, so they’ll probably opt for the bottled stuff.
to each his own.
k