Frosted Lemon Lime Martinis

I helped throw an engagement party recently where the theme was "Frosted." Naturally, I offered to provide an appropriately themed alcoholic beverage. For this event I made a lemon lime martini. The goal was a frosted, semi clear-white martini.

Measurements are for 1 pitcher of lemon lime martini:

3-4 cups vodka (depending on strength desired)

1.5 cups sparking lemon-aide (Italian lemon-aide)

1.5 cups lime-aide

1/8 cup lemon simple syrup

1/2 cup club soda (or sprite for a sweeter taste)

Fresh slices for garnish

Rock candy sticks for garnish

Fill pitcher (or large seal-able container) 1/8 full with ice. Add the first 4 ingredients and shake. Mixture should turn slightly frothy. Add club soda and several slices of lime to the pitcher and stir gently. Each martini can be garnished with a lime slice and a rock candy to finish the job! Depending on how sour your lime-aide and lemon-aides are, you may need to adjust the amount of simple syrup.

Lemon Simple Syrup:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Bring water to a boil. Stir in sugar and lemon zest. Boil until water becomes syrupy. Let cool before using in your martinis.

Vampire Punch

For this year's Halloween party I made Vampire Punch. The trick was to make a dark red drink that was ever so slightly cloudy, to look like blood. It was quite a hit and I had to send someone to the store to get more supplies! To set the mood I served this in a large crystal punch bowl. I added a few red glow sticks. Some other creative ideas would be to stick plastic spiders in ice cube trays and fill them with water, creating spider cubes for the drinks. You can also fill a latex glove with water and freeze it so you have a large floating hand in your punch. The recipe below is for a punch bowl worth of drinks.

1 bottle Cranberry- Pomegranate Juice
1/8 cup ruby red grapefruit juice
1/4 cup Chambord
1/2 handle of Vodka

1 cup club soda

Pour all the above ingredients into the punch bowl and gift it a few stirs!

The Strawberry Jalapeno Martini

Our first night in Chicago we met up with one of my coworkers at the bar/restaurant in our hotel (Hotel Felix). At the suggestion of our doorman, we tried the Strawberry Jalapeno Martini. It actually wasn't half bad. It wasn't exactly spicy though. It actually tasted more like pink grapefruit juice in my opinion. It is definitely an interesting combination and I'd be curious to create a drink at home that may be along the same lines. The restaurant had a nice atmosphere, dimly lit with a little bit of swanky-ness. We didn't end up eating there so I can't comment on the food.

http://www.elatechicago.com/

Sarah's Signature Pomtini

I figured, what better way to start off a blog about drinks than to post the recipe for my signature pomtinis. They are always a crowd favorite. The key to making a good drink is to home squeeze your own juice whenever possible. Any juice from concentrate, or out of a bottle, will just never taste quite the same as if you squeezed it yourself.

I must also note, one of the easiest ways to mix up a batch of martinis for a group of people is to throw all the ingredients into a nalgene bottle. Just add ice, ingredients, close and shake away!

With this recipe, measurements are for 1 nalgene of pomtinis, usually serves about 3.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups Pom-Mango juice
1.5 cups Titos Handmade Vodka
1/2 lime, squeezed
1 grapefruit, cut into wedges
1 can sprite

Fill nalgene about 1/3 the way with ice. Add Pom juice, vodka and lime juice (add more vodka and pom juice if there is still a lot of room in the nalgene, equal parts). Shake until frothy. Evenly distribute into martini glasses, only filling the glasses 2/3 of the way. Squeeze one wedge of grape fruit into each glass, leaving the wedge in the glass. Add a splash of sprite to each glass to top it off. Then... Enjoy!

*Note- try variations with different flavors of pom juice. Obviously any vodka will work, Titos is just my all time favorite.