GOLDEN RAMOS FIZZ

  Basically a Ramos Fizz is gin, lemon and lime juice, egg white, cream, powdered sugar or super fine sugar, orange flower water and some soda. This Golden Ramos Fizz replaces the lemon and lime juices with tangerine juice and the orange flower water with orange bitters. It's that simple and it's that good.   If you want to make it even more golden you can turn it into a flip by using a whole egg in place of just the egg white. Eggs bring such a lovely richness and mouth feel to a cocktail and, in my recipes, I always use pasteurized eggs so there is no worry about any contamination. You really should try at least one, and the best egg cocktails to try out at first are a Ramos Fizz or a Pisco Sour. This kind of bridges both!   GOLDEN RAMOS FIZZ
INGREDIENTS: 1-1/2 Oz. Plymouth Gin 1 Oz. Heavy Cream 1 Pasteurized Egg White 1 Tbsp Powdered Sugar 3 Oz. Fresh Tangerine Juice 1 Dash Orange Bitters 1 oz Soda Water Orange Wheel   DIRECTIONS: Combine all the liquid ingredients, except the bitters and garnish in a blender and dry blend for a minute to emulsify the egg white and aerate the cocktail. Transfer this to an ice filled cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for another minute to chill. Pour into a Tom Collins or rocks glass, tap the orange bitters onto the foam and garnish with a orange wheel. With this cocktail you'll be golden, pardon the pun, and it's perfect for Oscar parties, Emmy parties or gold wedding anniversaries!  

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The COCKTAILS of NEW ORLEANS

Happy Mardi Gras! Laissez les bons temps rouler - with booze! (Click photos for credits)
The cocktail was not invented in New Orleans but it certainly calls NOLA home. Certainly some famous and delicious libations grew out of the Big Easy. You can, of course, have any cocktail you'd like in New Orleans but there are a few you need to try if you want to "drink in" the true spirits of the birthplace of jazz. Heck, you wouldn't go there without having a beignet, some mudbugs (Crawfish), gumbo, King Cake or chicory coffee, why miss the local liquid offerings? What to drink in New Orleans?

TRY SOME OF MY MARDI GRAS INSPIRED COCKTAILS

SAZERAC

Designated on June 23, 2008, as New Orleans official cocktail by the Louisiana legislature. Be sure to check out this fun adaptation I did for the SAG Awards a while back: The Sagzerac
1.5 Oz. Cognac 1/2 Oz. Absinthe One sugar cube Few drops of water Two dashes Peychaud's Bitters 1 Drop Angoustura Bitters
Wash the an Old Fashioned (rocks) glass with the absinthe. (Washing a glass is rolling the liquid in the bowl then dumping out the excess), set glass aside. Drop the sugar cube in another Old Fashioned glass, add the drop of Angoustura Bitters to the sugar cube, then the water and muddle with the cognac. Add ice, stir until chilled then strain into the absinthe washed rocks glass, express the lemon twist over the drink then discard the twist.

HURRICANE Beloved by tourists and Spring Break collegiates. Created in New Orleans by Pat O'Brien in the 1940's.

VIEUX CARRÉ  Invented by Walter Bergeron, the head bartender at the Monteleone Hotel (Carousel Bar) in New Orleans in the 1930s, the Vieux Carré was named after the French Quarter , the "Old Square" (Vieux Carré).

(Image in public domain)

ARNAUD'S SPECIAL

The house cocktail of the famous Arnaud's Restaurant in the 1940's, this is a Southern take on a Rob Roy where the sweet vermouth and Angoustura Bitters are replaced with the Dubonnet and orange bitters.
2 Oz. Balvenie Doublewood Scotch 1 Oz. Dubonnet Rouge 3 Dashes of Orange Bitters
Stir in a mixing glass with ice until chilled then strain into a chilled cocktail (martini) glass. Express then garnish with an orange twist. 

FRENCH 75 Named for a French artillery gun, the French 75 was created in 1915 at the New York Bar in Paris (Harry's New York Bar) by Harry MacElhone. There is another version that substitutes cognac for the gin, but not in my universe. 
1 oz Gin 2 oz Champagne 1/2 oz Lemon juice 2 Dashes Simple Syrup
Add the gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake until well chilled and strain into a Champagne flute. Top off with the Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist.

RAMOS FIZZ My favorite of the bunch! Originally called a New Orleans Fizz, the Ramos Fizz was invented by Henry C. Ramos at his bar in Meyer’s restaurant in New Orleans in 1888. I have several fun variations as well; the Cherry Diamond Ramos Fizz, the Golden Ramos Fizz and the Absinthe Minded Leprechaun!

Combine all the liquid ingredients in a blender and dry blend for a minute to emulsify the egg white and aerate the cocktail. Transfer this to an ice filled cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for another minute to chill.* Pour into a Tom Collins glass and garnish with an elaborate orange rind carving. 
* Interesting fact: back in the good old days, before blenders, creator Ramos insisted you needed to shake the Ramos Fizz for a full 15 minutes. This is what was required to create the meringue like consistency of this cocktail. There is the famous incident where one bar lined up 15 shaker boys and sent the cocktail down the line because one shaker boy could not shake a cocktail longer than a minute without his arms seizing up! Thank goodness for mod-cons!

Updated 2-2019 PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

Mardi Gras KING CAKE FLIP Cocktail

Throw me something, mister! Like cake! And put it a cocktail!
WHAT EXACTLY IS A KING CAKE?

The King Cake is a traditional Mardi Gras/Epiphany dessert that takes it's name from the Magi, the three kings who visited the new born Christ in the manger. It started out as an Epiphany Feast bread, then, three centuries ago, became a bread with sugar on top and beans inside. Now it's a bread style cake flavored with cinnamon, stuffed with cream cheese, frosted and decorated in the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold. It also always has a plastic baby figurine hidden inside.
King Cake, brought to New Orleans by French settlers, became a traditional food of Mardi Gras parties around the late 1800's. The baby tucked inside represents the baby Jesus* and the tradition in New Orleans is whoever gets the baby in their piece of cake hosts the Mardi Gras party next year. The colors of Mardi Gras and the King Cake represent the colors of the crowns of the Magi; purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power.
Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is also known as Shrove Tuesday, and is celebrated the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday by indulging in rich foods, drinks and enjoying parties. It's the last ditch binge before the repentance and austerity of the Lenten season.
For my Mardi Gras gift to you I'd like to help with that drink indulgence by sharing my cocktail recipe for ...
The KING CAKE CREAM FLIP
INGREDIENTS: 1-1/2 Oz. Dark Spiced Rum 1 Oz. Pinnacle Whipped Cream Vodka 1 Whole Pasteurized Egg 2 Oz. Half & Half 3 Tsp. Brown Sugar Cinnamon 2 Tbsp. Cream Cheese Purple, Green and Gold Sugars
SPECIAL TOOLS: Blender, Piping bag, dessert plates for sugar rim, Old Fashioned glass.
DIRECTIONS: Pipe some cream cheese on the rim of your glass. Dip a third of the rim in each of the colored sugars. Chill your glass in the freezer.
Add the rum, vodka, egg, cinnamon, half and half and the brown sugar to a blender and blend on medium to emulsify the egg. This is an easy way to dry shake an egg cocktail.
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, pour in the blended cocktail and shake until chilled. Pour this into your rimmed glass, sprinkle on a dusting of cinnamon and serve.
Garnish tip: You can add a tiny plastic baby to the rim if you like. I rarely garnish my cocktails with anything that's not edible, however the baby is a big part of the King Cake tradition. If you're good at sculpting fondant or chocolate you can sculpt a tiny little baby and add that to your rim. Sadly, though I am an artist, I am not a sculptor and I couldn't find a little edible baby anywhere BUT I did have the Cupie Doll baby my Dad brought home from WWII so I tucked that in with the beads and doubloons for the photo!
Happy Mardi Gras!
*A LITTLE LITURGICAL HISTORY OF THE ADVENT TO EASTER HOLIDAY SEASON
(Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong!) In Western Christianity a dinner is eaten on the Eve of Epiphany (the night of January 5, also known as Twelfth Night or Three Kings Day). Known as the Epiphany Feast it often included the gifting and eating of sweetened breads. This bread evolved into the modern King Cakes of today.
In the Catholic Church the holiday season follows a path from the advent of Christ to his resurrection. Advent is the celebration of the coming of Christ and leads into Christmas. The Epiphany season celebrates the revelation of Jesus as the son of God, and starts on the evening of December 25th and goes through January 6th. Also known as The Twelfth Day of Christmas, Epiphany is the climax of the Advent/Christmas season, ending on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday (Fat Tuesday!) and leads into Lent. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is a six week period of atonement and self denial which leads to the Easter season. On the liturgical calender Lent ends the day before Good Friday, the day Christ died, and is the Friday before Easter Sunday, which is the celebration of the resurrection of the Christ. The dates can change somewhat with the year, the locale and the denomination of the church doctrine.


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BOOZING IT UP in the WHITE HOUSE

CAN I TOP THAT OFF FOR YOU, MR. PRESIDENT?
Thanks to a tweet from Mixellany.com (@Mixellany) I read this fun article from Vanity Fair by Alex Beggs on favorite cocktails of our Founding Fathers. It listed some of the preferred alcoholic drinks of past Presidents of the United States from George Washington up to Gerald Ford and also presented an encapsulated view of the history of American happy hour tastes.
Mixed up by Leo Robitschek, these libations bounce from Colonial punches to spritzers to nogs to straight up whiskey, a tale of cocktails as varied as our tales of P.O.T.U.S. Surprisingly, several of these sounded pretty darn good to me, not always the case with many of the vintage drink concoctions of our forefathers. In particular, I really liked the choices of Grant and F.D.R. (probably because I've been on an egg cocktail binge) so I decided to shake them up - with a few Martini Diva tweaks:

MERINGUE ISLAND PUNCH Tweak of Ulysses S. Grant's Meringue and Roman Punch.

SPICED POMEGRANATE RUM FIZZ Tweak of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Haitian Libation.
If you'd like to try out Robitschek's original recipes with his full directions check out his article on Vanity Fair.
AN INTERESTING ASIDE: Beggs mentions in the first sentence that Benjamin Franklin was in the habit of having a hard cider with his breakfast. Today this would be a sign of a drinking problem, however this was not an unusual habit to have back in colonial America where beers, ales and ciders were simply a part of their daily menus. Keep in mind that the early settlers of America believed, like their European counterparts, that alcohol was medicinal. Additionally, drinking water could be dangerous because, even though there was an abundance of water sources, there was no way to tell what was safe and what was polluted and people often sickened or died from tainted water. Add this to the fact that even untainted water, extracted from natural sources, was often full of sediments and mud and required settling or filtering before it was drinkable and it makes sense that Franklin would grab a quick cider instead!
If you like trying out early American cocktails, you might also enjoy my RATTLED SKULL, a modern day version of the popular colonial cocktail, the Rattle Skull.

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More VALENTINE COCKTAILS than Cupid has Arrows!

Valentine's Day is coming up. You planned a HUGE cocktail party and every bartender within 100 miles is booked. You just ended up with the biggest project your business has ever conceived of on YOUR desk and it's due February 13th. You need fabulous, epic Valentine Cocktails and there's no time to Google anything let alone try to invent them yourself. Who ya gonna call?

Boozebusters!?
Nope, sorry, no such thing, BUT have no fear, The Martini Diva is here! Below are the links to ALL my fabulous, flirty Love Potions. From pink martinis to red margaritas to dessert inspired drinks, I have your hearts and flowers, chocolate and berries and sparkling sips all laid out for you to choose from right below.
No need to spend hours searching the webz for suitable love inspired drink recipes, save that time for some well deserved pampering. I list all the ingredients necessary, any special tools required and give detailed directions for all my crowd pleasing, delicious and visually impressive Cupid infused cocktails. There's even a few posts with 40 proof love poems to quench your literary thirst.
So concentrate on that project, order up some tapas from the local deli to feed your lovelorn sweeties and hit the mega booze mart on your way home. You can sleep in and still have stunning craft cocktails for the liquor and love starved guest(s) who will be knocking on your door on Valentine's Day.

THE MARTINI DIVA'S VALENTINE COCKTAILS
MOROCCAN ROSE CHERRY CLAFOUTIS MARTINI HIBISCUS HEART VALENTINE FIZZ LOVE NOTION #9 CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY SANGRIA HOT CHA CHA CHERRY MARTINI SPARKLING HEART COCKTAIL
PINK VALENTINE COCKTAILS 9 heart hued hooches that add color to Cupid's cocktails.
POMEGRANATE VALENTINE MARGARITA Your favorite tequila cocktail all decked out in red candy hearts and pomegranate goodness.
SEXY VALENTINE COCKTAILS 6 sexy sips to sass up happy hour.
TRUE LOVE VALENTINE COCKTAILS 8 romantic liquid refreshments full of hearts, flowers and flavor.
VALENTINE COCKTAILS FOR THE BROKEN HEARTED 6 humorous and heavenly ways to drink your heart troubles away.

There you have them, more Valentine Cocktails than Cupid has arrows!
May your Valentine's Day be filled with whatever your heart desires!

Updated 2-2019

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CHERRY CLAFOUTIS MARTINI Valentine Cocktail

I'm a huge fan of almost all the TV cooking shows and I'm a faithful devotee of ABC's The Taste. I never miss an episode. I love that the outcome is based more on taste than personality.
While watching The Taste I live tweet during the show and, after a segment involving sweets, asked Chef and Judge Ludo Lefebvre what his favorite dessert was and he tweeted me that it was his mom's Cherry Clafoutis. This struck a chord with me as clafoutis was a dessert I was very fond of while living in France, having enjoyed it often at family dinners with my then fiance. I love anything with cherries and clafoutis is loaded with lovely dark cherries.
A typical Cherry Clafoitis (or a flognarde if made with another fruit) is very much like a sweet fritatta or a custardy pancake and is made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, fresh cherries, milk (and sometimes heavy cream), vanilla, a pinch of salt and often a splash of brandy. I took these ingredients as my starting point for flavoring my cocktail. A bit of cake, a bit of custard, a lot of cherry goodness and a French chef inspired this Cherry Clafoutis Martini.    I happen to like cocktails with egg whites in them, they bring a creamy texture and a beautiful, natural foamy top. Though eggs perform a slightly different role in a cocktail then they do in baking, in both cases they add richness to the end product. So, instead of pulling out the mixing bowls and doing my mise en place to bake a Cherry Clafoutis, I pulled out the cocktail shaker and lined up the bar tools and booze to shake a Cherry Clafoutis!

The CHERRY CLAFOUTIS Martini
INGREDIENTS:
2 Oz. Dark Rum 1/2 Oz. Pinnacle Whipped Cherry Vodka 1 Oz. Kirsch Splash of Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur 2 Oz. Black Cherry Juice* 2 Tbsp. Pasteurized Egg White 1/2 Oz. Half & Half Pinch of Fleur de sel (salt!) 3 Tsp. Simple Syrup 2 Dashes of Vanilla Bitters Homemade Maraschino Cherry
 DIRECTIONS:
Chill your glass in the freezer. 
Combine all the ingredients except the Maraschino cherries in a blender and blend for a few seconds to emulsify the egg into the cocktail.
Pour this into an ice filled cocktail shaker and shake until chilled. Allow the drink to settle for a minute or two then pour into your chilled martini glass. Slide a Maraschino cherry onto the rim and enjoy!
Makes two 4 ounce cocktails or (in my single woman case) one big martini!
* Since it's February (National Cherry Month!) cherries are out of season here in Arizona so I used some lovely cherry concentrate from Benjamin Twiggs to make my dark cherry juice. Though I prefer fresh, using a concentrate allowed me to keep the juice a little thicker and more tart which I really liked with the egg white.
Dark Rum is interesting in that it has a heavy vanilla nose so it was a perfect base liquor for the vanilla cake and custard notes of the dessert. The Pinnacle Whipped Cherry vodka brings in some creamy flavor and added cherry punch. The Kirsch (a cherry flavored brandy), along with the cherry juice and cherry vodka, bring in the brandy and cherry elements. I popped up the sweetness with some simple syrup and the half and half substitutes for the milk in the baked recipe. The egg white gives the cocktail it's body and the bitters curtail the sweetness while adding a deeper vanilla undertone to the rum. I added the splash of maraschino liqueur at the end on a whim and it tied in the garnish very nicely.
I did a full afternoon of experimental mixology and was a little blitzed by the time I got the recipe worked out, but it was worth it. I put Cherry Clafoutis in a glass and added a little buzz. It was a good day of baking shaking!
Merci, Chef Ludo, thanks for the inspiration, vous êtes mon préféré célèbre chef!

Updated February 2025PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

LOVE NOTION #9 Chocolate Raspberry Sangria

I don't do a lot of wine cocktails. Most of the time I prefer to enjoy my wine as the vintner intended, but I do occasionally enjoy a sangria or a wine cooler. When I came across this interesting bottle of Chocolate Shop Red Wine I impulsively grabbed it off the shelf. I'd enjoyed Deco Chocolate Port when I lived in Sonoma County and thought I'd give this wine a try.
I loved it! It was similar to the port, was a little less chocolate forward, less sweet with a lighter body. It's exactly the kind of dessert wine I would serve with chocolate strawberries or chocolate truffles or anything with chocolate. I might even pair it with a savory dish like cocoa and coffee rubbed rib eyes. Of course being me, I had to add stuff to it to make a cocktail. What I ended up with was a remarkable chocolate raspberry sangria.
I think I've died and gone to heaven.

The LOVE NOTION #9 Chocolate Raspberry Valentine Sangria
INGREDIENTS: 5 Oz. Chocolate Shop Red Wine, Chilled 1/2 Oz. Raspberry Vodka 1/3 C. Fresh Raspberries 2 Tbsp. Raspberry Syrup 1 Tbsp. Chocolate Syrup 2 Drops Fee Brothers Aztec Bitters
Garnish Chocolate Heart Candies (I found adorable white & dark chocolate hearts from Ghirardelli) 1/2 C. White Chocolate, Chopped 1/2 C. Dark Chocolate, Chopped
Special Tools: Pastry brush, Old Fashioned glass, metal strainer.
DIRECTIONS: Melt the white chocolate in a double boiler or microwave then paint the rims of your glasses from the top to a quarter of the way down the glass. Attach a chocolate heart candy to each rim with an extra dab of chocolate, holding gently in place until it stays. Place your glass in the refrigerator to set up the chocolate. Puree the raspberries with the Chocolate Shop Red Wine, raspberry vodka, chocolate and raspberry syrups and bitters in a blender. Strain this into an ice filled cocktail shaker (to remove the raspberry seeds) and shake until chilled. Pour into your garnished glass and enjoy for a romantic finish to your Valentine dinner. Makes two full cocktails.

Some chocolate dipped cookies, chocolate covered marshmallows, sugar, chocolate dipped pretzels or nuts go really nice with this cocktail.

Tip1: Use up the rest of the melted chocolate by dipping the pretzels or nuts in it to serve with your cocktail.
Tip 2: Reduce any of the sangria leftovers to a syrup and pour over ice cream! If you have any, that is, and you probably won't.

Updated 2-14-2025 PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY