cocktails Archives - A Calculated Whisk

Pineapple Peach Margaritas

July 18, 2017 By Becky 6 Comments

These creamy, frozen pineapple peach margaritas are just the thing for hot summer evenings.

Somehow a whole month has passed without me sharing a recipe, and it’s felt like no time at all! I didn’t intend to take such a break, and I’ve been sitting on these scrumptious margaritas for quite some time, but one thing after another kept piling up. I’ve been hard at work on some exciting freelance projects that I can’t wait to tell you about as soon as I’m able!

For today, though, I’m offering a simple, sweet, and creamy libation. These pineapple peach margaritas are made with ripe summer peach, frozen pineapple, fresh-squeezed orange and lime juice, and a splash of cream or coconut milk. I like a mix of sea salt and raw sugar for the rim, which helps strike an ideal and refreshing balance between sweet and salty tastes.

15 Naturally-Sweetened Cocktails for Summer Celebrations

May 21, 2017 By Becky 16 Comments

These 15 delicious drinks are made without refined sugar to help keep your summertime soirées a little healthier without missing out on any of the fun. If you have favorite naturally-sweetened cocktails for summer, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Watermelon Gin Cooler from A Calculated Whisk: This refreshing drink is made with honey-basil simple syrup and botanical gin.

Grilled Mango Habanero Margaritas from Wicked Spatula: This sweet & spicy cocktail is sweetened with honey. Grilling the mango adds a little bit of smoky flavor!

Strawberry Prosecco Lemonade

May 8, 2017 By Becky 26 Comments

If you love a light and refreshing spring cocktail, this strawberry prosecco lemonade is for you!

It’s strawberry season! In case you couldn’t tell from my Instagram profile, I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been picking strawberries at my CSA work share each week, throwing sliced ones onto salads, blending them up into smoothies, snacking on them plain, and making them into this strawberry prosecco lemonade.

I’m going to be sipping on this all spring and summer–it’s so refreshing and flavorful. VOVETI prosecco is made from 100% prosecco grapes and has a tempered acidity, but it’s not to sweet. In other words, it’s a perfect match for sweet strawberries and tart lemons. VOVETI has hints of pear, green apple, melon, and peach, which is another reason it goes so seamlessly with the fruity flavors of this drink. And of course, with the popping corks and fizzy bubbles, drinking prosecco always feels like a celebration.

Cafe Brulot

February 20, 2017 By Becky 6 Comments

This post is sponsored by Cost Plus World Market.

Café brûlot is a fun and dramatic cocktail that will light up your Mardi Gras celebration.

Looking for an entertaining way to celebrate Mardi Gras at home? Look no further than this café brûlot cocktail. To make this iconic New Orleans drink, brandy and Grand Marnier are infused with citrus peel and whole spices, and then set on fire with a long match. To finish the drink and act as a fire extinguisher, hot chicory coffee is poured in. And although it’s not included in the traditional recipe, I like my café brûlot with a pillowy topping of gently whipped cream. It’s hard to decide whether the pyrotechnics or enjoying the drink itself are the best part of this drink!

See more photographs and step-by-step recipe instructions on Discover, a blog by World Market!

This post is sponsored by Cost Plus World Market. Thank you so much for supporting the sponsors that keep A Calculated Whisk running!

Smoky Maple Margarita

December 26, 2016 By Becky Leave a Comment

Smoky Maple Margaritas

If you’re looking for a uniquely delicious drink to ring in the new year, this smoky maple margarita is just the ticket!

If you celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful and Christmas and a fabulous first night of Hanukkah! My mom flew down to Chattanooga and arrived on Christmas Eve, and we have been having the best time hanging out with my in-laws and nieces. The girls are beyond excited because they got a trampoline yesterday. In between eating all the holiday treats, it was really nice to bounce a bit.

Smoky Maple Margarita

Today I’m just popping in quickly to let you know that I’m sharing a recipe for a smoky maple margarita over on SoFabFood. It’s pretty much a classic margarita with two important upgrades: it’s sweetened with maple syrup and laced with smoked paprika. It’s not enough to make the drink spicy, but just enough to give it an enticing smoky flavor and aroma that’s perfect for this time of year. Wishing you and yours a fabulous and delicious 2017!

Click here for the smoky maple margarita recipe!

Pomegranate Vanilla Bean Margaritas

November 25, 2016 By Becky 6 Comments

These festive pomegranate vanilla bean margaritas are sweet and just a tad sour, with extra richness thanks to the vanilla.

How was your Thanksgiving? To be honest, over here we’ve had better. One of my fiancé’s brothers was in an accident the night before Turkey Day and is still in the hospital. We spent the morning with him at the hospital yesterday and my fiancé slept there last night. He’s going to be okay, but it’s been quite a scare. We were planning to drive down to Atlanta for a big gathering with Ben’s extended family, but ended up staying here in Chattanooga and grabbing a quick restaurant Thanksgiving at Beast and Barrel’s buffet (it was delicious, but I missed getting to cook!). My future niece has also been sick, so I think we have a Thanksgiving redo in the works for Saturday or Sunday.

After all of that, I’m totally ready for a pomegranate vanilla bean margarita. And after a hard day of Black Friday shopping, I bet you will be, too! (By the way, my absolute favorite kitchen gadget, the Instant Pot, is on sale for just $68.95 today! It’s the one thing I bought last year on Black Friday and I use it all the time. Highly recommended as a gift for yourself or others who love to cook and/or save time.)

A few years ago, Ben and I hosted Thanksgiving at our apartment in Boston. I had just started grad school, and I invited all my classmates (60 total) to come if they weren’t able to travel home for the holiday. Ten of them accepted and my mother came, too, so we had a good-sized crowd. It’s the only time I’ve hosted Thanksgiving so far and it was so much fun. Ben made most of the savory dishes, although I did contribute a sweet potato and kale gratin, and I was in charge of dessert. I was also in charge of drinks, and decided to make these cranberry margaritas. I added a tiny splash of vanilla extract, and they were a huge hit. We had beer, wine, and other spirits available, but no one drank anything other than our featured cocktail!

Watermelon Cooler

August 5, 2016 By Becky 4 Comments

This refreshing watermelon cooler has a hint of basil and cucumber and stays chilled thanks to frozen watermelon balls. Cheers to summer!

Big news: the popsicle stain came out of my pants, and I made us a watermelon cooler to celebrate!

A couple weeks ago Ben came home with a really pretty bottle of something called Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin. He tried it at a bar in Nashville and enjoyed it, so he hunted down some to bring home. I was excited because gin and tequila are my spirits of choice, but Ben usually only buys whiskey and I just can’t stand it. I tried the gin and in addition to the expected piney juniper flavors, I noticed hints of cucumber and sage. It’s such a unique flavor, and really refreshing for summer. I suspected it would pair perfectly with fresh watermelon and decided to create this watermelon cooler.

A watermelon cooler is just what you need on a summer Friday. If gin is not your spirit of choice, this is also delicious virgin and I bet it’d be great with tequila, too. It’s basically watermelon juice amped up with a bit of subtlely herbal honey syrup and tangy lime juice.

Grapefruit Jalapeño Margaritas

April 26, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

Grapefruit jalapeño margaritas sweetened with honey are perfect for Cinco de Mayo! Tequila quickly infused with jalapeños gives these just the right amount of kick.

How do you feel about spicy cocktails? I’m pretty much obsessed, and these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas are my current drink of choice. I hope this doesn’t make me sound insufferably picky, but I’m starting to feel the same way about non-spicy cocktails that I feel about non-salted desserts. If my sweets are not salted or my cocktail doesn’t pack a punch, I’d almost rather go without. The depth of flavor that the jalapeños give these margaritas really makes them for me.

That being said, I aim to please, and you can definitely skip the chiles and just make a delicious grapefruit margarita if spicy drinks are not your thing. It’s easy to make some margaritas spicy and some not according to each person’s tastes. Ben took a sip of my spicy margarita and declared it “interesting”, but preferred the plain grapefruit ones I made per his request.

The inspiration for these grapefruit jalapeño margaritas comes from my friend Lauren, who shares amazing gluten-free recipes over at Wicked Spatula and has quite an impressive array of creative margaritas. If you read my site often, you may remember that we swapped guest posts back in the fall. Last weekend, we met in real life for the first time! Lauren lives about a three-hour drive from me, and we decided to meet up at her place and road trip together all the way up to Pittsburgh to go to a workshop led by Jessica Merchant of How Sweet Eats.

Strawberry Orange Ginger Fizz

March 28, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

This strawberry orange ginger fizz is the perfect spring mocktail or cocktail. It’s sweetened with honey, so it’s paleo friendly and free of refined sugar.

I love a good pink drink, and this strawberry orange ginger fizz is the one I can’t stop sipping on at the moment. It’s a mix of wintry citrus and springy strawberries, so it’s the perfect way to toast the bridge between the seasons, and the ginger gives the drink just the right amount of bite. I’ve gotten to the point where I find a cocktail boring if just tastes sweet and has no other flavors. The ginger cuts through the fruit and honey here to create a taste that’s not only sweet and delicious, but also intriguing. And of course, the bubbles help with that, too.

The syrup for this drink takes less than 15 minutes to make and keeps for a week or so in the fridge. So if you make the syrup ahead of time, all you need to do when you’re ready to serve is spend two minutes chopping an orange and some strawberries and one minute mixing the ginger fizz itself. It’s so easy, and so good! Why not invite a few friends over for an impromptu drink to celebrate spring?

Blackberry Smash

April 10, 2014 By Becky 11 Comments

Blackberries are my favorite fruit, and they are so delicious this time of year. In addition to eating blackberries & dark chocolate for breakfast, I’ve been using them to make this amazing mocktail/cocktail, the blackberry smash. I was going to call it a blackberry fauxjito, but blackberry smash is just so much more fun to say. In addition to being fun to say, it’s really fun to make and drink.

When I have a party, I like to offer one special, seasonally-inspired cocktail that I can make for my friends all night long. I’m not a very proficient bartender, so I don’t want to offer a bunch of different things, but I’ve found that having one unique drink makes a gathering way more glamorous and fun. At Thanksgiving this past year, I had ten people over, and was prepared with several different kinds of wine and beer, as well as the ingredients for cranberry margaritas. The margaritas were such a hit that I don’t think we opened a single bottle of wine–no one could say no to a creative libation based on fall’s quintessential berry.

Strawberry & Cream Margaritas

May 5, 2013 By Becky Leave a Comment

You didn’t think I was going to leave you without an idea of which margarita to enjoy with your cupcakes, did you? I am here for you!

This is delicious. I am not sure if it really counts as a margarita, but it has tequila in it. And it has something on the rim (not salt, but who’s counting?).

Ingredients (makes two servings):

1 cup frozen strawberries

1 cup coconut milk

4 ice cubes

2-3 shots silver tequila

Squeeze of lemon or lime juice, plus extra

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2-3 tablespoons honey (for a paleo-friendly version) or agave nectar (for a vegan version)

Sugar for glasses

Blend all ingredients except the sugar in a blender until smooth. Taste, and add more lemon juice or agave nectar (or tequila!) if desired.

Dip the rims of two glasses into lemon juice and then sugar. Pour into the glasses and enjoy!

¡Salud!

Dirty Banana and More Jamaican Stories

April 18, 2013 By Becky Leave a Comment

Have I ever mentioned how much I love alligators and crocodiles? Well, I love them a lot. I’ve seen alligators in Houston’s bayous and on Louisiana swamp tours. Once I even got to hold a baby alligator at a reptile-themed birthday party. Yesterday, I got to see crocodiles for the first time in the Black River’s Great Morass! So much fun. We went on an hour-long boat tour and saw at least six different crocodiles. The guides know each of the crocodiles by name–they are very territorial and are always seen in the same spots. This big guy is named Terrorist. Yikes!

After the tour, we got to see some more approachable crocs in the crocodile nursery. But, even that little guy looks like he could give quite a bite.

Here’s what the Great Morass looks like. All those dangly branches that look like vines are a special kind of root that mangroves send down to help them get more nutrients out of the brackish water.

Next up was the Appleton Estate Rum Tour. The best part was when they opened up the bar after the tour–we got to serve ourselves shots of as many different kinds of rum as we wanted. My favorite was the rum cream, which is featured in my new favorite Jamaican cocktail (see recipe below). It’s like a better version of Bailey’s. I also liked the Berry Hill Pimento Allspice liqueur, which has a pleasant double burn from the alcohol and spice.

I bought an adorable mini-bundt rum cake at the Appleton gift shop, which was a deliciously buttery, rum-soaked cake. My mom has a mini bundt pan, so I am totally planning on making my own version when I get home. Maybe with a glaze involving rum cream? I love that stuff.

Caves at Xtabi

So, yesterday was jam-packed with tours, and today we decided to just take it easy by the cliffs. We walked about 15 minutes down the road from our hotel to Xtabi, a resort that we’d heard serves great breakfast. We could smell delicious baked goods even before we rounded the corner and saw the place. Right away, we knew we just wanted to spend the entire day there. The tables for the restaurant are in a large round gazebo and porch perched on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Two sets of stairs lead down to the lagoon, where you can swim or catch a ride on a glass-bottom boat. Another set of stairs lead to the caves, where stone benches invite you to sit and relax in the dark coolness by the grotto. I, however, left in a bit of a hurry after a couple of bats zoomed by uncomfortably close to my head.

Turns out the food is just as fabulous as the surroundings. I ordered the bread basket (hello, carbs do not count when you’re on vacation). It came with a corn muffin, banana bread, and a cinnamon roll, all split open, buttered, and grilled to crispy perfection. Ben ordered an ackee and callaloo omelette, which featured ackee from the tree right outside. It was also delicious, but I did not get a chance to snap a picture before he started eating (I guess it’s kind of annoying if someone is always trying to photograph your food from a few different angles before you can even get a bite in).

We lounged by the cliffs all morning, watching small rainstorms come and go. When it got to be a respectable hour (ahem, 11:30 am), we ordered drinks. I got one called a Dirty Banana–I was sold by the name and the fact that it had rum cream in it. This is my new favorite cocktail! I’m sharing a recipe here based on the ingredients Xtabi uses, so you can try it right away. You might have to tweak some of the quantities to get it just how you like it. Let me know what you think!

Recipe (serves one):

2 ounces Tia Maria
2 ounces rum cream or Bailey’s
1 banana
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
Chocolate syrup

Drizzle chocolate syrup all over the inside of a tall, frosted glass. Blend the remaining ingredients until smooth. Serve in the chocolaty glass. If you want it extra boozy, top with another splash of Tia Maria. Enjoy!