Mother's Day Special / Green Goblet / Orange Fury

MOTHER'S DAY SPECIAL

Mother's Day Special for...you know...

The weekend is here and I am perfectly late for this Mother's Day Special! Then again, this cocktail needn't to be for any specific occasion as long as we're celebrating!

Last Sunday was our national Mother's Day and I wanted to make a drink for my wife. In addition to the cake I baked (and card I made), I wanted to make a cocktail that is both luxurious and sweet enough (she prefers sweeter drinks over sour/bitter ones). Well sparkling wine is thus an easy component. For the others I decided to go red and hence:

• 2.5 cl wild strawberry liqueur
• 2.5 cl creme de cassis
• 1 small-ish strawberry muddled
• (dash lime juice)
• sparkling wine
• orange zest for garnish

What I did was put the four first ingredients in a small cup and let them "soak" for ~ day. Truth to be told, this I could've left out and I doubt it would've made such a huge difference. Stir them quickly with ice and strain into a champagne flute. With the sparkling wine be careful since it reacts with sugary components thus foaming a lot. Finally garnish with a orange zest and give to your loved ones.

GREEN GOBLET

Just experi...I knew what I was doing, trust me!

So I had almost half a pint of freshly squeezed orange juice at my disposal. I really wanted to make a few cocktails using said stuff so I went to my liquor cabinet and randomly with extreme precision and knowledge picked a few extra bottles to whip up this Green Goblet (name courtesy by my co-worker! :D)

• 6 cl freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 cl absolut pears
• 2 cl melon liqueur
• 1 cl maliby
• 2 maraschino cherries for garnish

Shake all except the cherries with ice, double strain and drop the cherries last. The Green Goblet works as a good dessert drink. It is soft, has a distinctive melon-pear bite to it with coconut flavors following to the end.

ORANGE FURY

Another wild exp-, cocktail made with determination

Here we have the second one, called Orange Fury (again, name courtesy by my co-worker!) Let's face it, two green drinks would be such a shame. Using the miniature bottle(s) I found, this is more suitable as an aperitif:

• 6 cl freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 cl absolut ruby red (grapefruit vodka)
• 2 cl maraschino liqueur
• bitters for garnish + orange zest (flamed)

Shake the three first ingredients with ice, strain into a coupe, drop a few dashes of bitters on top of the drink and garnish with a flamed orange zest. Serve.

This cocktail is quite different than its green counterpart, Similarly soft but much more bitter, it has more "oompf" to it. The essential oils from the orange peel work wonderfully in this drink. Also, I liked the bitters floating on top giving this Fury its kick.

 

Melon Ball cocktail

MELON BALL COCKTAIL

Prepping for summer! Another Midori based cocktail at your hands! Fair enough, this isn't quite the "wow-amazing" - type of cocktail. But let's see how it's made:

• 2.5 cl Midori
• 2.5 cl vodka
• orange juice / pineapplejuice
• honeydew melon for garnish

Build in a highball glass with ice, give it a gentle stir and garnish. Finally I could use my melon baller for this! About the OJ/pineapple juice. According to some ancient recipes, it was always made with OJ but somehow during the years it had been substituted with pineapple juice. Or vice versa. Anyhow, I used OJ. 

Not a superb cocktail. Nothing special in this one. The color was a yellow-ish with a slight green hue at the bottom. Tastewise, kind of meh. Had I used pineapple juice instead, I could've notched this cocktail up a bit, even using a different glass might've helped. I mean, shaking the ingredients and straining into a martini glass could've made a difference...we will...never know....

Summa summarum, a slight disappointment this one was.

Midori Splice

MIDORI SPLICE

Booaaaah!! Luxury at hand! Well, almost, but fair enough, let's get busy with the Midori Splice! History goes Splice was some sort of ice-cream-brand in Down Under (mate) so yeah, let's just make an alcoholic version of it! Before getting into the details, though, I must say I now understand why the Piña Colada is totally famous. Pineapples + cream = profit! But enough of that, let's break down the Midori Splice!

• 3 cl Midori (melon liquer)
• 3 cl Malibu (I used coconut rum from DeKuyper)
• 9 cl Pineapple juice
• 3 cl fresh cream
• a maraschino cherry

In a tall, ice filled high ball glass, build the cocktail in the given order and finally layer the cream on top. Add the cherry and enjoy.

A few words I will say about this cocktail. First of all, a truly fruity drink, the creamy-pineapple mixture was yum, so good! As I got further down the drink, the pure alcoholic content was a tad strong and not quite appealing per se. A straw or a bit of stirring would be recommended for an overall more pleasant drink. Now it felt like drinking mixers first, then the alcohol. To be honest, the first time after I drank the first two layers, I mixed the alcohols together and then added another layer of pineapple juice + cream just to enjoy this again :)

The Midori Splice, I like it!

Champagne cocktail Shaker style

CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL SHAKER STYLE

More sparkling cocktails! Here is a champagne cocktail I made using the recipe Shaker Bar in Helsinki/Jyväskylä use in one of their mixes. It's an interesting one and I had to try it myself:

• ~1 cm piece of cucumber
• 2 cl midori
• dash simple syrup
• sparkling wine (champagne)

First, cut a pice of cucumber, drop it in your cocktail shaker and muddle the juices out of it. Add the midori and dash of simple syrup and ice and shake it but don't break it! Take your chilled champagne flute and doublestrain your mixture in the glass. Then, carefully layer the champagne (I used sparkling wine) on top of the base liquids. Again, be careful when adding sparkling wine to something sugary, it'll foam like crazy.

At this point you can either use dried cranberries (their way) or one cocktail cherry (my way) and drop them in the drink. A beautiful contrast between green/red. Some stir the drink once for the ingredients to mix but I left it as it was. Better that way.

This was an interesting cocktail. Especially towards the end the flavors from the cucumber and midori...they work! A dry beginning with a sweet after-taste. Not bad. Not bad at all!

Tropical Captain

TROPICAL CAPTAIN

Hello once again! So I did a little cocktail experimenting of my own the other day (yesterday), inspired by the hotel bar I visited a few times during my honeymoon. Since the hotel was located next to the marina, I did a little brainstorming and came up with an idea I really wanted to try. I call it the Tropical Captain.

Since I only had the ingredients in mind, I actually did this cocktail twice, as shown below.

The left is the first version, the right the final version

With the first one I used the following ingredients and measures:

• 4 cl white rum
• 4 cl mango puré (was about three to four small tea spoons)
• 2 cl mango liquor
• lemon juice from two wedges
• lemonade
• a dash of midori (melon liquor)

Combined the four first ingredients in a cocktail shaker, shook them with ice, strained in a highball glass and topped off with lemonade. Added the dash of midori on top.

These measures were clearly too much. At the time I strained the mixture in the highball glass, it was almost full. I could only add so little lemonade to top it. Taste-wise it was very good, the combination of mango/lemon/rum worked fine. The midori I could barely taste.

After my first version I started tweaking the amounts of liquor I would use. So I came up with my next (and final) version, which ended up working like a charm:

• 2 cl white rum
• 2 cl mango puré (1½ tea spoons)
• 2 cl mango liquor
• lemon juice from one wedge
• lemonade

This time I left the midori out and roughly cut everything else in half. After straining this I still have enough space to top it with lemonade. Also, now the cocktail had a more fizzy feel to it, which was nice.

All in all, my experiment was a success. Not that the flavor combination is somewhat specially unique, but I sure had fun creating this cocktail! (+ it tasted excellent!)

Japanese Slipper

JAPANESE SLIPPER

Back in the days

A totally better picture, 2013

Greetings from the Far East! This cocktail is also one of my all time favorites. I present you with the Japanese Slipper. Invented in 1984, here we have a drink that has a strong melon-y taste powered up with flavors of lemon and triple sec.

• 1 shot of Midori
• 1 shot of lemon juice
• 1 shot of Cointreau 

Since standard measures differ depending on the country, I will not put exact measures, just remember that 1 shot of everything, let it be 25ml, 30ml or even 40ml. Moreover, if you have a smaller cocktail glass, of course it is better to use less of the ingredients. 

Just add all of the ingredients into a cocktail shaker, add plenty of ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Drop a maraschino cherry to the bottom of the glass or alternatively, a slice of honeydew melon on the rim works fine as well. Go big, go Japan!

Squashed Frog

SQUASHED FROG

Another easily made and good tasting shot, this drink makes a good party starter! 

What you need:

• 1.5cl Grenadine
• 1.5cl Midori
• 1.5cl Advocaat (an egg based liqueur, but any cream liqueur would do the trick)

In the given order, layer all of the ingredients into a shot glass, let it settle and go! If you want to make a "hemorrhage" version, add the Midori and Advocaat first, then add the grenadine which will sink to the bottom to create the effect given just like in the Alien Brain Hemorrhage drink.