Category Archives: Cocktails

Drink of the Week: Strawberry Collins

Posted on June 8, 2012 | 1 comment

It’s been a tough week between potty training trials and tribulations (look for a blog on that soon), crazy thunderstorms and night waking on top of the usual deadlines. Add in a craftastrophe and I’m looking forward to my weekly dose of medication in a hurricane glass.

Enter the Stawberry Collins from the Sandstone Lounge at the Hyatt Calgary’s summer cocktail menu. I am new to gin cocktails and this drink hits all the right notes. You can taste the gin and lime juice right away, but plunge deeper with the straw and you’ll come away with sweet strawberry puree. It’s very refreshing — just what mommy needs before she picks the children up from school!

It’s sweet and tart plus — bonus! — there’s gin.

Strawberry Collins

  • 1-1/2 oz No. 3 gin
  • 1 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp. simple syrup
  • Soda water
  • 2 tbsp. strawberry puree

Build the drink over ice in a hurricane glass. Add the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup, top with soda water, then dollop on the strawberry puree. Stir. Yum.

–Recipe courtesy Tracy Burton, Sandstone Lounge

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Drink of the Week: Rum Punch (large batch)

Posted on June 1, 2012 | 3 comments

If you want to host a good mixer, serve up a large batch of rum punch. I recently did this for a school fundraiser and the party turned into a “rumaway.”

People drank the punch like water. They got wasted. One gal even puked! No, we aren’t a bunch of university revellers; we’re responsible adults — with kids even! But there’s just something about rum punch. It smells good, for starters, thanks to the nutmeg and Angostura bitters. It tastes good too, just as Mount Gay Eclipse rum mixed with brown sugar syrup and lime juice should. So there’s a danger folks will chug it, even though it’s strong.

Now that it’s garden party season it’s easy to whip up a big punch bowl of it — just make sure there’s a disclaimer next to the bowl. Something like,  “Warning: this punch is really strong — it will get you drunk!”

This punch should only be consumed after reading the disclaimer: It will get you drunk.

Rum Punch (to mix in an 11-litre dispenser or bowl)

  • 2 parts Mount Gay Eclipse rum (I used four 750-mL bottles)
  • 1 part lime juice (I used 1.5 litres of Ready-Set-Serve lime juice by Markon)
  • 1 part simple syrup (I used 1.5 litres I made myself, method below)
  • 1/2 part water (about 750 mL) or to taste
  • 25 heavy dashes Angostura bitters
  • 1 tbsp. nutmeg
  • Big ball of ice (method below)

Into a large punch bowl or dispenser gently place a round ball of ice to keep the punch cool without diluting it (fill a balloon with water, tie it off and freeze. Peel the balloon off and voila! Ice ball). Pour in the rum, lime juice, simple syrup, water, bitters and nutmeg. Stir everything together with a big spoon. Serve in a plastic cup — or rocks glass, if you’re fancy — packed with ice.

To make simple syrup, combine equal parts brown sugar and water in a saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved. Cool and refrigerate.

Yum.

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Drink of the Week: Pineapple Ginger Margarita

Posted on May 25, 2012 | 1 comment

The good folks at Earls sent me a care package a couple weeks ago: all the ingredients I needed to make a Pineapple Ginger Margarita, including half a pineapple and some house-made ginger syrup. I tried the drink almost immediately (if you don’t already know, I really like margaritas), but I had to resist blogging about it until now as Cinco de Mayo was earlier this month (and my DOTW on May 4 was — you guessed it — a classic margarita).

This cocktail is fantastic. Its inspiration comes from markets in Latin America where tropical fruit is served fresh with salt and chili powder, tantalizing your sweet, salty and spicy senses. They’ve transported the markets to your margarita by  rimming the glass with the sugar-salt-chili mixture, muddling pineapple to get a hit of sweet juice, and creating a delicious ginger syrup that adds a spicy kick. But you can still taste the lime and tequila, so you’re in familiar territory and will recognize it as a margarita hybrid. Yum.

Pineapple and ginger never tasted so good! Photo courtesy Earls.

Earls Pineapple Ginger Margarita

  • 1 oz ginger syrup (see recipe below)
  • 1 oz fresh lime juice
  • 4-5 fresh pineapple chunks (approx 1 oz)
  • 2 oz El Jimador Blanco tequila
  • Pineapple chunk garnish

Into a mixing glass, measure ginger syrup, lime juice, pineapple chunks and El Jimador Blanco. Using a pestle or back of a wooden spoon muddle until juice has escaped from the pineapple. Fill mixing glass with ice, top with a stainless steel shaking tin and shake vigorously 12 times to mix ingredients. Strain over fresh ice into a double rocks glass with a half rim of sweet & spicy rim mix (see recipe below). Garnish with a fresh pineapple chunk, with the top dipped in sweet & spicy rim mix.

Ginger syrup

  • 1-1/2 cups water
  • 8 oz ginger sliced into 1/4-inch coins, do not peel
  • 1-1/2 cups sugar
  • 5 oz honey

In a medium saucepan bring water, ginger, sugar and honey to a simmer. Immediately remove from heat as soon as sugar has dissolved. Puree, using a handheld blender. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into an appropriately sized container with lid, discard ginger pulp. Allow to cool uncovered to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate up to a maximum of nine days.

Sweet & spricy rim mix

  • 3 parts sugar
  • 1 part salt
  • Dash cayenne pepper

Toss together.

— Recipe courtesy Earls

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