Happy Valentine’s Day, sweethearts!
I’ve got a quick little retro cocktail recipe that is perfect for date night or just drinking alone while you curse Cupid. It’s perfectly pink and has a kick!
Pink Rose Cocktail
1 ½ ounces gin
1 egg white
1 tablespoon grenadine
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon cream
Shake well in a cocktail shaker with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
That’s it! Enjoy
Happy Thanksgiving, my darlings! We’re not doing much for Thanksgiving around here this year, but what we are doing is mixing up some delicious cocktails for the occasion.
This “Apple Pie Cocktail” is our current favorite. It’s an adaptation from one of my favorite vintage Patrick Duffy books and it’s a delight. It’s a refreshing cocktail with seasonal notes of fruit and apples. Be careful with this one! It goes down really smooth so pace yourself. Now go rummage through grandma’s liquor cabinet for that apple brandy and start mixing!
Here’s what you need:
1 ounce Bacardi Rum
1 ounce Italian Vermouth
4 dashes (about a teaspoon) Apple Brandy
4 dashes (about a teaspoon) Lemon Juice
2 dashes (about 1/2 teaspoon) Grenadine
Shake well with ice and strain into a glass. I garnished mine with a pie crust spiral.
To make the pie crust spiral, just take a strip of pie dough and wrap it around the handle to a metal spoon or something similar and bake for 10-15 minutes. Remove the spiral from the mold before it completely cools and is still somewhat pliable and then let cool completely.
Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving!
Tomorrow is the 4th of July and I don’t know about you, but I plan on laying poolside with a tropical umbrella drink in my hand. I like to be as festive as possible with my holidays so I decided to do a layered red, white, and blue cocktail based on my favorite tiki style drinks.
Here’s how you make it!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz Coconut Rum
1 1/2 oz Blue Curaçao Liqueur
3/4 oz grenadine
3/4 oz pineapple juice
Crushed Ice
Pineapple and cherries to garnish
First mix the pineapple juice and grenadine in a glass. Add crushed ice. Add blue curaçao (pour over an upside down spoon, it helps the liqueur land evenly and not too heavily). Add coconut rum in the same manner. Garnish.
When you’re ready to drink it, use a straw to mix it all up and enjoy!
One of the main things I wanted to do when we moved into our new place was to give our patio a makeover and get it all prettied up for outdoor entertaining and lounging. I’m happy to report phase one of that is done! (I’ll be sharing more about that soon.)
To celebrate I invited some of my new neighbors over and threw a little shindig with the help of Risata Wines. My neighbors didn’t want their photos shown because of privacy reasons, but I did get some photos of my pre-party set up on the new patio.
Hooray!
I invited everyone over for a quick meet and greet so I set out different types of Risata Wines and some snacks to nosh on. 
I wanted a casual vibe so all I did was lay everything out on a table and a few chairs scattered around.
We also hung string lights to add a nice glow in the evening hours. Don’t the mylar balloons spelling out happy phrases look great against our new hedge? I’m thinking about leaving these up full time!
We also served a fruity moscato punch that’s super easy to make. All you have to do is puree a handful of strawberries and a handful of pineapple in a pitcher.
Then pour in a bottle of chilled Risata Moscato d’Asti and give it a quick stir.
Serve cold with a strawberry to garnish!
I can’t wait to entertain more here!
Cheers to summer celebrations!
This post was sponsored by Risata®, but as always all opinions and thoughts are my own.
In honor of today being World Cocktail Day I figured it would be the perfect time to tell you about Shaker & Spoon, a cocktail subscription club that I tried out this month! Shaker & Spoon sends you everything you need to make 3 different cocktail recipes (4 of each, 12 cocktails total). We’re talking syrups, bitters, garnishes, mixers, citrus—everything is included besides the alcohol. Each month is based on a different spirit, so you have the opportunity to try something new with each box. It also makes a great gift for the cocktail lovers in your life.
This month was the agave blanco box. Tequila! My favorite.
It was stocked with produce, syrups, bitters, chiles, and even a little bottle of tajin to rim glasses.
The easy to follow recipe cards give you all the info you need from instructions to what type of glass to use. 
The first recipe I tried was a refreshing cocktail made with cucumber, chili pepper, and limes.
The next one is a Mexican version of a moscow mule. It was made with a delicious Mexican spice syrup and ginger beer.
Last but not least, a spicy recipe featuring mole bitters, habanero shrub, and agave!
Thirsty yet? You can sign up now and receive $20 off any subscription with the discount code ‘melodrama’!
The next box is Sake (the Japanese fermented rice liquor) and Shaker & Spoon will be donating a portion of proceeds to the Helen David Relief Fund, which assists women in the bar industry who are fighting breast cancer. If you’d like to further support this great cause and will be in Las Vegas on May 19th, you can attend the annual For the Love Of Cocktails event! They will be raising money for the HDRF and showcasing 35 cocktails by bartenders from around the country.
Cheers, babies!
This post was sponsored by Shaker & Spoon but as always, all thoughts and content are my own.
Easter time is upon us and that means it’s Cadbury Egg season!
You know the ones! Those chocolate eggs filled with a sweet candy creme. They’re everywhere! My husband brought some home and instead of just sitting around eating them we decided to get creative at cocktail time.
I present you the Cadbury Creme Fizz!
This recipe makes two drinks:
4oz Vodka
2 tsp Heavy Cream
1 tsp Maraschino Cherry Syrup
Creme from two Cadbury Creme Eggs
Club soda
In a mason jar or cocktail shaker pour the vodka, heavy cream, cherry syrup, and Cadbury Egg Creme. Whisk vigorously to make sure the egg creme is well incorporated. Add ice, cover, and shake well until the outside is frosty. Strain into two coupes, top with club soda, and serve with a Cadbury Creme Egg.
That’s right! Garnish with your left over Cadbury Egg chocolate shells. It tastes so good when you eat the chocolate along with sipping the cocktail. Yum yum.
Enjoy!
We all have traditional comfort foods and drinks that taste like the holidays to us. You know, the ones that you just can’t do without and look forward to having once a year, every year? One of ours is Coquito, a creamy Puerto Rican coconut and rum based drink.
Every family has their own recipe and preferred way of making it, some use egg yolks making it more of an eggnog-like drink, but the mainstays are always coconut cream and rum, and lots of it.
Here’s our favorite recipe given to us by my aunt. Thanks, Titi Pily!
COQUITO
1 (12 fluid ounce) can Evaporated Milk
1 (14 ounce) can Coconut Cream (unsweetened)
1 (13.5-ounce) can Coconut Milk
1 (14 ounce) can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup White Rum
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
4 Cinnamon Sticks
1 teaspoon Whole Cloves
1 2″ to 3″ piece of Fresh Ginger
2 cups Water
You’ll be making a sort of tea with the ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. First, peel the ginger and chop into large chunks. Place the ginger in a medium saucepan and muddle until all pieces are smashed. Then, add the cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and water to the pan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Once it reaches a boil, lower heat, and simmer until the water turns brown, about 20 minutes.
Once the tea is ready, strain into a large measuring cup, you should be left with about 1 to 1.5 cups of liquid.
Add evaporated milk, coconut cream, coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk, rum, vanilla extract, ground cinnamon and 1 cup of the tea to a blender (or a large bowl if using immersion blender) and blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until everything is well blended.
Pour the Coquito into glass bottles or mason jars and refrigerate until it’s cold. Once it’s ready to serve, shake the bottle or jars to make sure everything is well combined, pour into small serving glasses, and top with a light sprinkle of ground cinnamon.
This is the last weekend before Halloween and you’re probably prepping for Halloween parties, or maybe you’re like me and planning what you’re going to eat and drink in front of the TV on Halloween night while you watch horror flicks in your pajamas. Either way, this is the perfect cocktail to help you get your spooky on.
Satan’s Whiskers Cocktail
1 oz gin
1 oz french vermouth
1 oz italian vermouth
1 oz orange juice
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
1/2 oz orange bitters
Put everything into a shaker with ice, shake vigorously, and strain into a glass.
Recipe from The Official Mixers Manual by Patrick Gavin Duffy, 1934.
Hello, friends. I’m going to give you a quick little recipe for something often I drink to avoid drinking actual water (because water sucks).
I love watermelon and usually have it in my refrigerator at all times if possible. Most of the time I’ll eat some and then use the rest to make agua de sandía (watermelon water). This has always been my favorite agua fresca (aside from horchata of course), and I’ve played around with a few variations, but this is one of my favorites for this time of year because it incorporates lemon and rosemary. I don’t like mine to be too sweet, but you can adjust the sugar to your taste depending on how naturally sweet your melon is.
Ingredients:
Half of a large ripe watermelon
Juice from half of a large lemon
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 sprig rosemary
Ice
Inside of a large pitcher, muddle the sugar and sprig rosemary. In a blender, blend watermelon and water together. Pour watermelon mixture through a strainer into your pitcher (sometimes I skip this part if I’m feeling pulpy) and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add ice and serve cold.
(Optional: Add a shot of tequila and sing Beyonce’s lyric “I’ve been drinkin…watermelonnnn”.)
Enjoy!
One of my favorite things to do when I haven’t seen my friends in a while is host a friend’s night with good drinks, yummy snacks, and hilariously inappropriate games. I pride myself in being the hostess with the mostest (alcohol) so I always have to be equipped with quick and easy ideas that I can whip up at a moment’s notice. I teamed up with my friends at IZZE® to share a few ideas for your next #FriendsdayNight.
Making a tassel garland with leftover colorful tissue paper is easy and super cute. All you have to do is cut long strips of paper, bunch them together, fold the bunch in half around a piece of string, and twist. Easy peasy!
Snacks are easy too. Cut up some fresh fruit and mix up a bunch of fresh guacamole with chips. My favorite guac recipe is sooo easy. 4 medium haas avocados, half of a red onion (chopped), a handful of cilantro (roughly chopped), juice from half of a lime, and salt to taste.
Don’t forget the drinks! This is my favorite part.
I like to have both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options. The flavored sparkling beverages from IZZE® are perfect for cocktail mixing or drinking plain. My personal favorite is IZZE® Sparkling Grapefruit juice mixed with a shot of white tequila and a squeeze of lime. Garnish with a grapefruit wedge and lots of ice!
Enjoy your next Friendsday Night!
This post was sponsored by IZZE® through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about IZZE®, all opinions are my own.
Melodrama 