It is Ghostly Season! Time to get out the skeletons, bats and other trinkets of witches and monsters! watch horror movies! Dress up nice! The children at Trick or treat with all kinds of unhealthy sweets! carving pumpkins! eat pumpkins! Pumpkin- er… drinking pumpkin drinks?
Yes, yes, we have something: the Pumpkintini! And ten more cocktails that are thematic or tasteful (or just purely visual) for Halloween. Cheers and Happy Halloween everyone!
Oh yeah …
… for all drinks served in a cocktail glass/martini glass/coupe: first prep the glasses with ice cubes! Or (if your freezer is big enough) in the freezer, okay?
There it is, the pumpkin cocktail! Except for the suffix ‹-ini›, it has almost nothing to do with a martini in color and taste, but rather with Halloween.
Sables or similar cookies
4cl white rum
3 tbsp pumpkin puree
1 cl maple syrup
1cl bourbon
A pinch of ground cinnamon, cloves and ginger
2 cl coconut milk
Place the cookies in a sealable freezer bag and mash with a rolling pin. Place the crumbs on a plate. Slightly wet the rim of a martini glass, then dab in the crumbs to create a fine crumb rim. Place the remaining ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes, shake vigorously and strain into the glass.
What do you think Satan incarnate drinks? Maybe this margarita with a blood– Red wine float:
5cl Blanco Tequila
3 cl lime juice
2 cl sugar syrup
1.5 cl red wine
In a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes, combine tequila, lime juice and simple syrup and shake vigorously. Strain into a pre-chilled champagne coupe. Carefully pour the red wine over the drink with an inverted bar spoon.
Certainly creepy in name, this family of cocktails (yes, there are quite a few ‘corpse revives’) belongs to the so-called Pick me up – hangover drinks – from the pre-prohibition era. This is the original version, invented by the great Frank Meier, head bartender of the Hôtel Ritz in Paris on the Place Vendôme.
4cl brandy
2cl Calvados
2 cl sweet vermouth
Fill a mixing glass with ice cubes. Add all ingredients. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Almost better known than the #1 above is this lemony version. There are other versions of this cocktail, by the way: Kentucky Corpse Reviver, Corpse Reviver #Blue and the Savoy Corpse Reviver (all recipes here).
some absinthe
2cl London Dry Gin
2cl Lillet Blanc
2cl Grand Marnier
2 cl freshly squeezed lemon juice
Wet the inside of a chilled cocktail glass with a little absinthe (turn horizontally so that the inside is completely saturated). Place the remaining ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes, shake vigorously and strain into the glass.
Where do you find such shovels? I want one like that!
5cl brandy
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
2cl Kahlua
1.5 cl Grand Marnier
3 cl espresso, freshly prepared
whipped cream (from the aerosol)
Oreo cookies
In a pitcher filled with ice cubes, combine the brandy, vanilla, Kahlua, Grand Marnier and coffee. Shake vigorously and strain into a pre-chilled champagne coupe. Top with whipped cream and garnish with crumbled Oreo cookies. And when you have a mini scoop like cocktail blogger Katie Stryjewski’s, it looks even better.
Well, if there’s one drink that fits the horror theme, it’s this one, which refers to Mary I, Queen of England, Mary Tudor, so named for her bloody persecution of Protestants in the 16th century.
5 cl vodka
1 cl fresh lemon juice
1-2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1-2 dashes Tabasco
Some salt and pepper
tomato juice
1 small piece of celery for garnish
Fill a pint or highball glass with some ice (an old-fashioned glass works too). Add vodka, lemon juice and spices and fill with tomato juice to the rim of the glass. Stir gently and garnish with a celery stick and/or a lemon slice.
Hey, this drink was voted the best cocktail in the world by the trade press in 2015. Killer.
6cl Rebeast Irish Whiskey
2cl Campari
1,5 cl Giffard Crème de Cacao
1,5 cl Giffard Cream de Banana
2 dashes of absinthe
Fill a mixing glass with ice cubes. Add all ingredients. Stir gently and strain into a chilled Nick & Nora glass.
Another Hemingway drink! Let’s let the authors speak:
4 cl absinthe
Champagne
«Fill a jigger» [4 cl] Absinthe in a champagne glass. Add chilled champagne until it gets the right milky milkiness.”
And then:
The name may remind us of that scary, highly venomous spider. Or a Marvel movie starring Scarlett Johansson. But one sip of this cocktail could change our associations forever. Because this Black Widow combines tequila, lime juice and agave nectar (the ingredients for a good margarita) with fresh blackberries (hence the name) and basil. And the bite is from the tequila, not poison.
3 basil leaves (+ 1 extra for garnish)
2 fresh blackberries (+ 1 extra for garnish)
5cl Tequila Blanco
3 cl freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tsp agave syrup
Place 3 basil leaves and 2 blackberries in a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes and shake vigorously. Then add tequila, lime juice and agave juice and shake vigorously again. Strain into a cocktail glass filled with ice cubes and garnish with a basil leaf and a blackberry.
The ultimate tiki cocktail. In the venerable bar Booze smuggler Tiki in Palm Springs it explicitly states on the menu that you can’t get more than one. noun est omen.
4.5cl golden rum
4.5 cl dark Jamaican rum
4.5 cl overripe rum
5 cl pineapple juice
2.5 cl fresh lime juice
1.5cl Falernum
1 dash of Angostura bitters
1 bar spoon of grenadine
1 shot Pernod
Place all ingredients with 150g crushed ice in a blender and mix briefly or in a blender jar and shake vigorously. Pour into a large tiki cup and garnish with mint, flour, or whatever. Serve with a straw. Drink only one a night!
The first documented mention of white russian can be found in the Diner’s Club Drink Book 1961 … in a footnote to the recipe for the Black Russian. This slightly older cocktail is therefore a white russian, but without cream. Plus, this pitch-black drink would look pretty cool at a Halloween party.
6 cl vodka
2 cl Kahlua
Pour vodka and coffee liqueur into an old-fashioned glass or whiskey tumbler filled with ice and stir gently.