Summer means holidays and holidays mean frozen cocktails.
So if you're looking for some easy,
surefire frozen cocktail recipes then this is the episode for you.
You might be thinking that frozen cocktails are just party drinks, but there's no reason
why they can't be as delicious and carefully crafted as your other drinks this summer.
They may be fun but no need to let your standards slip.
We've already taken a look at some important factors to consider whenever you're concocting
whatever icy cold beverage takes your fancy, and you can find a link to that episode below,
but here are some old favorites to start the party and make sure that you stay tuned
until the end because I'll even be forgoing the blender and trying an entirely new technique,
well new to me anyway, which comes very highly recommended and could
save you from being chained to your Vitamix at your next party.
Before we get to making though, I'd quickly like to thank Jesse,
Tom, Marcos, Karen and Dave & Cheryl for signing up and supporting us on Patreon.
If you would also like to support Behind the Bar then Patreon is an awesome way to do that,
and you get bonus content, so a bit of a win-win. You could also look at enrolling in our online
bartending course, or if you're after some new swag then check out our Merch.
If you're not in a position to support financially, then that's obviously totally fair,
but sharing episodes or telling friends really helps.
You could follow us on the socials or head over to withcaredivine.com and watch every cocktail
we've ever made from A to Z, well actually A to W because we haven't made the Zombie. Yet.
Check out all of those links in the description below.
Call me crazy but I tend to like to start at the beginning and the
strawberry daiquiri is actually one of the earliest written frozen cocktail recipes.
It appeared in a 1952 book imaginatively named Electric Blender Recipes by Mabel Stegner and
this was just as the electric blender was becoming commonplace in households
opening up a world of frozen possibilities.
And as always we're gonna get our garnish prepped first so we'll do that now. What we're just gonna
do is half the strawberry down the middle, I like to keep the little green bit on the ends,
another little pop of colour, then you can kind of spread it into a little strawberry fan.
So we're gonna go four or five frozen strawberries,
or you can just pop some fresh ones in there for a little hour or two beforehand if you like as well.
And 60 mils of rum, I'm using plantation three star because it's quite a full bodied
and fruity white rum, so it stands up really nicely in this drink.
Then we're going to go 30 ml of lime juice.
30 ml of sugar syrup.
Don't be afraid of just of kind of packing in a bit more than you normally would.
Then we're going to go about a cup of ice. If you have bigger cubes
then you definitely want to give it a bash.
These ones that we have in the ice machine here are actually fairly flimsy so they'll
probably be fine but I am just going to play on the safe side because I definitely don't
want to break the blender and just give them a quick little hit with the hammer first.
Pop the lid on and we're going to give it a whiz.
Not going to whiz for too long because actually the blender will start to heat up and
kind of introduce heat to it, if you have it on a high setting for a long time.
So it's a pretty kind of short sharp and get the job done type situation.
So really as soon as you can see that you've got all of your ice
chips are properly kind of blended through and then you're ready to stop.
Then we're gonna take our chilled glass out of the freezer.
Pop on a little strawberry and then you can add in a straw,
because obviously these are not the easiest things to drink without one.
I do tend to favour glass ones because metal get really cold and then paper can go a
little bit soggy, so these little ones from Surf Side Sips are actually pretty perfect.
And it's quite a good texture because it's just about holding the straw up,
but you know definitely not too stiff. And there we have a Strawberry Daiquiri.
From one esteemed frozen drink to another,
it would be impossible to make a video on frozen drinks and not include the Margarita.
The Margarita Slushie holds a special place in the drinking culture of the United States
so much so that the first ever slushie machine is enshrined
in the Smithsonian's national museum of American history.
So I'd better show you how to make a yummy version in your blender at home. So working
nice and quickly to make our frozen margarita, we're going to cut a lime wheel for garnish,
so just quite nice and thin off a fresh lime only at this point.
Gonna grab my tequila and the Cointreau out of the freezer,
and then I've already got my sugar syrup and lime kind of sitting just beside me here in the fridge.
So we're gonna go 60 mils of Tromba. I always like
to use blanco tequilas for margaritas because it's that bit kind of fresher.
And then we're going to go 20 mils of orange liqueur. Going with Cointreau,
it's that little bit kind of zestier and zingier.
15 ml of sugar syrup, although it feels pretty weird to me putting
added sweetener into a margarita it does really need it for the balance,
but also just the texture. It kind of binds everything together quite nicely.
And then 20 ml of lime juice. I'm not going a full shot of lime because
you do want to lean to the sweeter side.
Then about a cup of ice. You can go just under the smaller part of your shaker tin
and that's about a good amount, and that just goes in as well.
And then to whizz it up we're just going to start off a little bit. So
for a bit until it kind of gets going and then nice and high.
Literally just until all of the ice is dissolved, so kind of as soon as you can
cut it then do, so that it doesn't start to actually heat up the liquid inside.
Then grab your glass out of the freezer. We are going to do a salt rim on this even
though obviously you're drinking through a straw it's maybe not strictly necessary
but it just doesn't really feel right to not put a salt rim on a margarita.
Just doing it at the end so that the glass is still in the freezer for as long as possible.
Then we'll just go our little lime wheel and a straw.
Frozen Margarita.
Now the only problem with making banging frozen drinks like these
last two for your friends is that they might not want you to stop,
and standing at the blender all party long can start to feel like a little bit of a chore.
So is there something that you can do to prepare delicious frozen drinks ahead of time?
Well funny you should ask.
Adding ice into your blender is basically just freezing and diluting your drink,
so is there another way of achieving this? Well, yes. You could just pre-dilute and then freeze.
A boozy granita style drink is a great thing to
have prepared in your freezer for a party and you can either keep it
lighter and more sorbet style or loosen it out with a frozen spirit of your choice.
This recipe is literally endlessly adaptable, so
try mixing it up with your favorite fortified wines or marry different liqueurs and juices.
So to get started we're gonna juice up some citrus juice to go in here.
Keep the nice one for show and go with the older one here.
So one pretty big grapefruit there's given me
about a hundred mils worth of juice which, is pretty perfect.
And then we want about 100 mils worth of the same of orange juice, just for that kind of
rounder more sweet citrus flavour.
Now of course you can strain this but I think as long as you make sure you don't have
any like actual seeds or anything going in there I actually quite like having
little bits of like the flesh kind of through it that you can have a little
chew on if you feel like it. About 200 ml of fruit juice.
Then we're gonna go 200 mils of the Casa Mariol vermouth, which is a Spanish
white vermouth with lots of really juicy citrus notes which works really well here.
Then about 100 ml of whatever liqueur you're using, so a little peach liqueur for me here,
or you could go for something else like an apricot brandy. Whatever you have to hand,
it will be pretty hard to go wrong.
And then just a hundred mils of water.
So obviously you do have the juice in there you don't really need it for the dilution, but it does
just help the texture kind of set, that little bit more, as I said, kind of like more sorbet like.
So kind of up to yourself at this point but I'm gonna go 100 ml of water.
Now that's just going to get popped in your freezer, preferably overnight, but I'm sure
you know if you gave it kind of four or five hours you'd probably be pretty happy with it as well.
Now I obviously should have done this before I got stuff out the freezer but sometimes I forget.
I'm just gonna do a quick little grapefruit wedge garnish for this one.
And we can see that our Granita has gone pretty solid.
I wouldn't quite be holding it above my head, but you know, it's not too bad.
So just give it a bit of a mix through. Kind of flake it,
just got this lovely little kind of tasty, fruity, snow ice basically.
And then also from the freezer I've grabbed out some gins.
So I'm just going to go one shot of the gin in here,
obviously kind of up to yourself and depending how lit your party is,
but for the beginning of the day I think a little 30 mils is plenty.
And then I'm just going to spoon my granita in on top, so a nice generous serving,
we'll pop in our little grapefruit wedge and we can go a little mint sprig as well.
Really whatever you have hanging around, it's just bright and colorful and it's going to look pretty.
And last but not least, a nice straw. And there we have a little party granita slushie!
Three easy and delicious frozen cocktails,
perfect for summer. Or just a night with the heater blasting.
So now you know.