Lou's Cocktail Lounge

I do love cocktails, drinking them, mixing them or just reading cocktail recipes which is why I have written plenty of pages about cocktails and even have a blog called Dream Cocktails. If you enjoy cocktails then let’s have a look at a few cool ones here and enjoy the ambience.

I start off with a Cocktail of the Month which, as the name suggests, gets changed regularly so be sure to keep in touch with what we're drinking!

Next I'll meander through some cocktails and after a drink or two I'm sure we'll be good friends....

Let me introduce you to the cocktail of the month and this time I’m going to tell you how to make a Turkish Delight Martini. There are several different recipes for this drink and it was hard to decide which one to try, but as I hadn’t added Frangelico to a cocktail in a while we went with the following recipe.

Turkish Delight Martini

3 parts vodka

2 parts Frangelico

2 tsp rosewater

2 drops pink food coloring (optional, I had dark pink food coloring in my cupboard - I think it might have looked nicer with a paler pink!)

2 pieces of Turkish delight (optional)

This recipe makes two cocktails and although both the food coloring and the Turkish delight are optional I think they're both lovely touches.

Put the vodka, Frangelico and rosewater into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake well. Put a piece of Turkish delight in the the bottom of both of your chilled cocktail glasses. Now strain the alcohol into the glasses and there you have two gorgeous and delicious cocktails ready to enjoy.

Gin gets its distinctive flavour from juniper berries and has earned itself the moniker of ‘mother’s ruin’. This reason was because a few hundred years ago in London it was safer to drink gin than the water. Then came the gin palaces of the 18^th century which glamorized the spirit.

One of the most famous Gin cocktails is the martini which is believed to have evolved in the 1860s, one thing is for sure it’s certainly very popular even today whether you like it shaken like James Bond or stirred.

Martini Recipe

2 ½ oz gin

½ oz dry vermouth

Shake or stir with ice (depending on preference) and then strain into a martini glass and garnish with an olive or two. I must admit I prefer to garnish mine with a twist of lemon as I think lemon and gin go marvellously together.

More gin cocktails include Tom Collins, Gimlet and the French 75.

The popularity of vodka and in particular flavoured vodkas have brought about a wave of different cocktails. Firstly people started to drink vodka martinis (Winston Churchill and Cary Grant would both be turning in their graves at the thought!) and then we found that lots of different cocktails started to end with ini and they usually contained vodka! Drinks such as the Flirtini is just one example.

One of the popular vodka cocktails saw a surge in popularity in the late 90s thanks to the popular television show Sex and the City - that drink was a cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan Recipe

2 shots vodka

1 shot Cointreau

1 tsp lime juice

½ cup cranberry juice

Shake all of the ingredients together with ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into a martini glass to serve.

More vodka cocktails include a Bloody Mary, White Russian and Chocolate Martini

The most popular tequila cocktail around has to be the margarita and there are lots of different variations of this drink. The classic Margarita contains just three ingredients tequila, Cointreau and lime and the key is to get the correct balance of flavors with just these three….

Margarita Recipe

1 ½ oz tequila

½ oz cointreau

1 oz lime juice (and this MUST be fresh lime juice)

There are other tequila cocktail recipes however and they include Bloody Maria, Tequila Sunrise and the Paloma.

Now I must admit I’m not overly fond of whisky, but I do know a few people who for some reason unknown to me love the stuff! Now some of them don’t think whisky and cocktails go, but there are some recipes that more than a few people enjoy that are whisky based and these include the classic Manhattan, Whisky Sour, Old Fashioned and a Brooklyn.

Rum is a sweet spirit loved by pirates and the main ingredient in a delightful cocktail called the daiquiri.

Classic Daiquiri Recipe

1 ½ oz light rum

¾ oz fresh lime juice

¼ oz simple syrup

Pour all of the ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice then shake well before straining into a cocktail glass to serve. How you like your daiquiri is a personal thing however because the drink is all about perfecting that perfect balance so if you think it’s too tart then add some simple syrup, if you think it’s too sweet add more lime juice – simple.

Like with the martinis and margaritas there are lots of variations on the daiquiri, so much so that I’ve had to write a separate page on them – Daiquiri’s, The Best Rum Cocktail!

There are lots of other cocktails that are made from rum, however and they include mojito, pina colada and mai tai.

There are lots of different types of cocktails which include a range of ingredients from the main spirits with talked about to other culinary ingredients like basil, chillies and even fish sauce! Some of the more unusual cocktails (in my mind) seem to come when people fuse Asian flavours into cocktails which you can read about on my Asian Cocktails page.

One of the more bizarre cocktails that I've come across, but haven't been able to bring myself to try is the Sourtoe Cocktail. To me cocktails are delicious, special drinks to be celebrated whereas the main ingredient of the Sourtoe cocktail is a real, preserved amputated toe.

So if you're ever in Dawson City, Yukon pop into the Sourtoe Cocktail club and order up whatever your favorite cocktail is and get the toe popped in it, this is what makes it a Sourtoe cocktail!

Another unusual ingredient for a cocktail is squid ink and yet that's what gives the Squid Ink Sour it's dark color. Available at the London Cocktail Club in London it contains tequila, lime juice, agave syrup, egg white and squid ink.