cocktails – Dabbled

Halloween Cocktail Roundup 1

Dot — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:20:59 +0000

Creepy Bubbled Cocktails - Dabbled

It’s that time of year… time to start thinking about Halloween entertaining! Whether you’re planning to throw a big halloween bash, or just want to invite a few friends over to hang out while the kids trick or treat, wouldn’t it be nice to surprise your guests with a really creepy drink!?

There are a ton of ideas out there, but here are a few to get you started.

We’ll start with a few old Dabbled favorites…

Creepy Bubble Cocktails – the secret ingredient to these adds a delightfully eerie look!
Boing Boing’ed Last year: Halloween creepy cocktails, including the brain hemorrage

Pina Gholada - at Hostess with the Mostess

From Hostess with the Mostess (always a delicious source!)

Black Widow Martini & Screwed up Shooters
Rim your glasses with a candy “blood drip”
A vampire themed party, including cocktails (Twilight in this case, but could work for any blood drinkers)
Jack o’ Lantern cocktail
This is fabulous! I’ve seen the eyeballs before, but never in a drink! Make a Pina Ghoulada
Last Year’s Cocktail guide – good ideas!

More…

Creepy Cupcakes has a delicious looking drink roundup
Links to halloween themed cocktail and drinking glasses at Superpunch
8 Sexy halloween cocktails
Food Network’s Halloween drink ideas
More ideas from the Intoxicologist

I’m sure there will be more creepy cocktails to come, so stay tuned for round 2!

Thirsty? Tasty, unusual Spring cocktail recipes!

Dot — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Spring-y Cocktails with Recipes from Around Flickr.. Click through for ingredients and/or link to the recipe. I’m inspired, aren’t you!?

1. The Thai Boxer, 2. lemongrass cooler, 3. Watermelon and Rose Sangria, 4. Chocolate orange martini’s, 5. Bourbon Mint Tea, 6. Kermit Cocktails

I’ve got so much cool stuff to post over the next week or so… I’m trying hard not to just post it all now! My parents were cleaning up their attic, and brought me a stash of old records I had as a kid, so I’ll be sharing those. I do have a limoncello tutorial that I finally got around to writing up. And also the results of my candied lemons. What else? I have some felt that I was sent to review, so I’ll be doing a project with that. And I modded a t-shirt yesterday as my MSCEApril, so I’ll be writing up instructions on that. Plus a stash of comfort food photo recipes that have been hanging out on my harddrive, just waiting. So… Stay tuned!

And if you missed it, two new watercolors yesterday!

Other Flickr Roundups:

PS – don’t forget to vote for my instructable, the Hot Wheels Car Launcher!
Vote here: it’s the 7th one in the list.

How to Make Eggnog!

Dot — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:45:00 +0000

The other day I decided to make homemade eggnog for my White Elephant party tomorrow night. Because Alton Brown is my kitchen hero, I immediately headed over to foodtv.com and found his recipe. I decided to test several versions, and photograph & document the process for you guys. I started by trying the uncooked version. Obviously, if you’re concerned about salmonella, use pasteurized eggs. Verdict: Easy and Yummy.
Version 2 was the cooked version, also from Alton. Verdict: More difficult, but I haven’t tasted it yet! (It’s still chilling). See below the pic for the how-to’s.

Recipe: Alton Brown’s Uncooked Eggnog Version. Go over there and print out his recipe, as I didn’t recopy all of the instructions over here. Just consider this a user guide!

1. Prepare ingredients
* 4 egg yolks
* 1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon (i forgot to include in this pic)
* 1 pint whole milk
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 3 ounces bourbon
* 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
* 4 egg whites

Go ahead and separate your eggs. I happen to have a little egg separator, 2. separate eggs but it’s not overly difficult to do 3. by hand (just use the shell to strain most of the white, then cup the yolk in your fingers to let the rest drain between them
4. Here we have the ingredients again, all prepped (though I should have grated the nutmeg by this point too: (ingredients),
First I whipped the egg whites. Place the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat to soft peaks. With the mixer still running gradually add the 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form:5. Egg white, pre whipped, 6. whipped egg whites (soft peaks), 7. whipped egg whites hard peaks, set aside
Now for the yolks: 8. Yolks, 9. whipping till lighten in color,
Yet another time when the Microplane comes in handy: 10. Grating nutmeg (I forgot to do it earlier) By the way, whole nutmeg lasts much longer than pre-ground, and is worth the effort.
Add the sugar to the yolks, continue to beat until it is completely dissolved: 11. yolks with sugar added,
Add remaining ingredients, then whisk back in the whites: 12. Add Milk, cream, and nutmeg, bourbon, 13. whisk back in whites,
Ready for enjoyment! 14. A pitcher full, 15. MMMM… yum, enjoy!

If you want to try the cooked version, it’s very similar to the uncooked, so refer above. I’ve documented the extra steps here.

After beating egg yolks and adding sugar, 1. Heat Milk, Cream, Nutmeg just to boil, 2. Temper by slowly adding the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture, 3. Return to stove and cook til 160 deg
Add bourbon, refrigerate.
When chilled, you can incorporate eggwhites as in the uncooked version.

Based off some of the comments on the Food Network site, that the eggwhites were superflous, I decided to leave the eggwhites out of the cooked version I did. However I did really enjoy the lightness they brought to the Version 1, so in the future i’d recommend.

Halloween Cocktails – Creepy Bubble Fun!

Dot — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Last week I was sitting around trying to think of something different to do for halloween, and the idea came to me. Something that would look particularly creepy, and be unusual… Can you guess the secret ingredient? Ever had Bubble Tea? It’s made with large tapioca pearls, and has a really interesting look. I figured there’s no reason we couldn’t make some fun halloween drinks/shots/cocktails with the tapioca pearls. A trip to the local Whole Foods yeilded a bag of large pearls. So I tried some experiments (Note, the amount shown here is what I got from maybe 1/4 cup of uncooked pearls). First I made a test batch — following this recipe to cook the tapioca. You’re supposed to soak them in a sugar syrup, and I had on had some really bright blue drink mixer, which I figured would be perfect. Voila, bright blue translucent drink pearls with a slightly sweet flavor. Next I tried several other ‘soakers’ to see what I would get. I figured a red flavor would be nice, so I soaked some in grenadine. I also mixed some of the grenadine and the blue syrup to get a black/purple color. Someone suggested soaking in alcohol, so I tried green creme de menthe, black rum, jagermeister, and orange liqueur. (Click through to see them labeled on the flickr pic) Removed from the soaking liquids this morning… Note that (with the exception of the creme de menthe, the alcohol soaked pearls became smaller, harder, and opaque. The others are more transparent and jelly like. Interesting effects, you could obviously work with either result. Click through on the picture for a better view. The best thing about these is they can basically be added to any drink or shot where the flavors will work. They also don’t have a ton of taste, so they won’t mess up a drink. Add to a basic martini or cosmopolitan, for example. (I called this one my Caviar martini). Shooter ideas: #Frog Egg Shooter – Whitish opaque pearls (these were the orange liqueur ones) in a Midori shot #Fish Egg Shooter – Your favorite clear pink shooter with a mix of pink and white balls. #Or how about Grasshopper Eye Shooter (basic Grasshopper recipe with Green Creme de Menthe balls) #Blue berry-flavored balls in a Grand Marnier shot. The blue is my favorite — I think these would also be fabulous in a vodka tonic… Note: You could easily just make colored sugar syrups with food coloring and get any look you wanted. You could leave out the alcohol entirely for fun kids drinks too. I also love the idea of just making dishes of different colors of these and setting them out by the drink station, so people can add their own! Anyway, hope you enjoy this little addition to your halloween festivities. Tell your friends! More Halloween Cocktails More Halloween Food PS – I’ve written this up as an Instructable!

Halloween Cocktail Fun

Dot — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:57:00 +0000

edit: Welcome New Readers! Stick around and check out the other great halloween stuff.. or Subscribe!

<–Want MORE Creepy Cocktails? New Stuff HERE.

As halloween party time approaches, start thinkin’ about drinkin’! Fancy or scary, halloween cocktails can really jazz up a party.

<– The Brain Hemorage from TangoPango. Looks lovely doesn’t it? Supposedly tastes good though!

Talk of Tomatoes has several yummy sounding halloween drinks, including this Black Widow. –>
Check ’em out. Added 10/29: Another fun drink from Talk of Tomatoes – The Maggotini!

And wow, this Dark Chocolate Martini sounds decadent from Cook & Eat.

Hostess with the Mostess points us to a great Halloween cocktail guide. Very beautiful presentations. Also, lovely ways to label your halloween drinks.

These are nifty. Label your bottles with spiffy poison labels like these free to download creepy apothecary lables from spookshows.com

Have other halloweeny good cocktails?