Campari Orange Passion

CAMPARI ORANGE PASSION

Beauty in a glass! This is a variation of the basic Campari & OJ I found from their site. For my taste, Campari & oj is a bit too bitter, given it works as a nice aperatif. This recipe has a sweetness in it and I did like this so much more, although creating it takes more time. But it is worth it:

• 2 slices of orange (or wedges)
• 1 tsp of brown sugar
• 4 cl Campari
• 12 cl orange juice
• crushed ice
• a maraschino cherry to garnish

Take the orange slices and drop them in the high ball glass. Add the sugar and muddle gently. Then add the crushed ice, campari and orange juice and give it a gentle stir. Top it off with a bit more ice and top this cocktail with a cherry and a straw.

Now that summer is close(r) by, having one of these babies outside...wonderful.

Screwdriver

THE SCREWDRIVER

Probably the most well-known cocktail ever made, I happened to have a bunch of oranges at my disposal so of course I wanted to create this simpe but ah, such a nice cocktail:

• 4 cl vodka
• 12 cl orange juice
• 1 orange slice to garnish

Or simplified, 1 part vodka and 3 parts orange juice. The trick is to use only premium orange juice if made a true "cocktail". Of course anyone can pour vodka and oj in a high ball glass but I was feeling fancy so what I did was the following:

Pressed the juice out of the oranges, measured the ingredients into a cocktail shaker, added plenty of ice and shook it briskly. Strained the drink (to get rid of the excess pulp) into a high ball filled with ice, added the swizzle stick and garnished it. Avot!

The beauty of this drink becomes more apparent depending on the oj used! Many don't seem to understand this. They undermine this cocktail completely because their experience has been with cheap-ojs found from any grocery store...Spend some time with this and I assure you the taste is so much different...and better.

Blue Lagoon

BLUE LAGOON

Inspired by the far most greatest movie of all time, here's one of the summer hit cocktails everybody knows!

Just look how awfully I've made these Blue Lagoons in the past. Oh gosh!

Now here's a properly made cocktail, at least visual-wise!

This cocktail does not need much of an effort to make but hot damn it sure does look fine!

• 2 cl vodka
• 2 cl blue curacao
• lemonade (sprite/7Up)

Build this drink in a highball glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish with a lemon, lime or even add a sprig of mint like I did (*edit* when I was young and didn't know better)!

Taste-wise, it's hardy mentionable. I believe the visual effect gives more than it actually tastes like. Not being a strong cocktail either, you can have a couple of these with great ease. And if you haven't had one before...I feel sorry for you. Not a true "classic", but a famous drink nonetheless.

(unlike the movie, it sucked)

Post-edit 2013

So I made this cocktail once again, third time's the charm. Having learnt the art of...cocktail making (and perhaps a little bit of photography [given with the equipment I have at my disposal]) you can really see how the earlier pictures are quite horrible compared to my newest one; kind of like when I made three Mojitos in six years. You can really see the difference.

Still didn't make the cocktail any better. Better looking, yes. Better tasting? Absolutely not.

Firebird

FIREBIRD

Continuing our cocktail experiences, I present you with the Firebird:

•  2 cl tequila (white)
•  2 cl créme de bananes
•  2 cl lemon juice
•  4 cl lemonade (sprite/7up)

Shake the first three ingredients with plenty of ice, strain into a tumbler filled with a few ice cubes and add the lemonade. No garnish needed!

All in all, this cocktail tasted kind of funky. The combination of banana liquor and tequila does work! The fizzyness of the lemonade gave this drink a nice mouth-feel as well.

If you haven't had one of these birds before, go ahead and try one! NOW!

Smiley Face

SMILEY FACE

Another amazing shot! You have probably noticed how many of the shots I have shown are layered. That is because I like making ones! I get many good flavors in one glass, what's there not to like?!

Anyhow, here's how it's done:

• 2 cl of Kahlúa
• 2 cl créme de bananes
• 1-2 cl of fresh cream

Layer the ingredients and shoot! Tastes just as it should; a creamy coffee-banana mix at your service! The Kahlúa is a tad dominating but in my opinion it doesn't hurt the cocktail per se. I liked it.

Jafar

JAFAR

Inspired vaguely from the Disney cocktail Esmeralda my friend challenged me with, I present you with Jafar, a shot I invented.

Jafar being all bad-ass

This shot consists of three parts:

• 2 cl Jägermeister
• 2 cl Strawberry liquor
• 1 cl fresh cream

I used ice-cold Jäger, poured it first, layered the strawberry liquor and topped it off with a layer of fresh cream. What I had in mind that the Jäger would've been much darker and layered with the liquor make a more distinctive "black-red" shot, but this'll do just fine. 

Tasted surprisingly good! Sweet and creamy, the Jäger didn't give its usual edge to this shot at all, that was the "surprisingly" part. I give it a solid 4/5. I can imagine changing the liquor to any "flavored" one, blueberry, apple, you name it...

Pineapple Tequila

PINEAPPLE TEQUILA

As promised, the Pineapple Tequila! I had a little "accident" with my first bottle, that is when I put it (=forgot) in the oven for a disinfection I ended up with a melt cap as seen in the picture:

Yeah, that sucked majorly and to add insult to injury, this happened during Easter so I couldn't even get myself another bottle! After the holidays I got TWO bottles and instead of using the oven I just washed them in hot water and let to cool off.

After this procedure I used a coffee filter to strain the excess vanilla seeds off the liquid...

...and double strained it afterwards to get a clearer product.

What do you know, it turned out OKAY!

Here I let my inspiration flow freely; silver tequila is usually drunk with lemon + salt, golden tequila with orange + cinnamon so how could one have this? I got an idea...

...a slice of grapefruit + vanilla sugar!

It was awesome. Scent was extremely pineapple-y and taste-wise I could clearly taste the flavors of this fruit. Combined with the sweet/sourness from the grapefruit and sugar...

'Nuff said.