Jungle Bird

The Jungle Bird is a newer tiki cocktail to come along recently. Campari makes it a bitter red blended drink and blackstrap rum makes it rich and sweet.

The bottle of Cruzan 151 is shown because it was an ingredient in the homemade blackstrap rum I made to pull of this drink. You can use Goslings Black Seal if you like. I used the one-and-a-half ounces worth or 151 that goes into the drink and white rum and added a teaspoon of blackstrap molasses to it (shaking it up and straining it through a coffee filter) to make it a black rum.

• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. demerara syrup
• 3/4 oz. campari
• 1 1/2 oz. black rum
• pineapple fronds garnish

Combine all ingredients except garnishes in a blender with cracked ice. Flash blend and pour into a chilled Collins glass. Garnish with pineapple fronds.

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (Smuggler's Cove)

This cocktail is aptly named after the brilliantly colored Hawaiian state fish. The cocktail itself is beautiful and flowers and fruit accent it. One of the best things about Hawaiian drinks is that there is no spirit native to Hawaii. So you can use a gin; you can use a gin from Virginia; you can even use ImaGination.

If you have the ingredients and a blender, this drink is easier to make than it is to pronounce.

• 2 oz. gin (Murlarkey ImaGination used)
• 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 3/4 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. orgeat
• flowers/ maraschino cherry garnishes

Combine all ingredients except garnishes in a blender with cracked ice. Flash blend and pour into a chilled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with flowers and cherry. 

Norwegian Paralysis (Smuggler's Cove)

This is such a fun use of aquavit, the savory herb-infused spirit of the Scandinavian countries. The bottle pictured is Swedish Osterlenkryddors akvavit herb kit, but I refilled it with my own aquavit recipe. The rest is remarkably simple--you make a fruit punch. Aquavit is savory, with coriander, caraway seeds, fennel seeds and other herbs. (I added birch and angelica seeds in mine.) It goes great with citrus and pineapple.

• 1 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 12 oz. orange juice
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/4 demerara syrup
• 1/2 oz. orgeat
• 1 1/2 oz. aquavit (D.I.Y. used)
• lemon wedge and umbrella garnish

Combine all ingredients except garnishes in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled highball glass full of fresh ice. Garnish with a tiny umbrella stuck into lemon wedge.

Champagne Punch

(Photo by Ned Drummond)

This is a reasonably sized punch for a small gathering, and a really good use of sparkling wine and spirits to produce a strong and balanced communal drink. The photo I used is a half portion, so it doesn't fill the bowl completely. But it was the perfect amount for three big drinkers. The full-size punch makes 15 servings.

• 1 cup cognac (Mewkow used)
• 1 cup cherry liqueur (Cherry Heering used)
• 1 cup triple sec (Cointreau used)
• 1/4 cup sugar syrup
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 bottles (750 ml.) Champagne or sparkling wine (Korbel brut used)

Combine juice, spirits and sugar in a bowl and refrigerate up to two hours before serving. Fill with large cakes of ice (snack bags filled with water and frozen beforehand are great.) Add Champagne and stir when ready to serve.

Hinky Dink's Fizzy (Smuggler's Cove)

I really enjoyed this drink for its rum flavor and dry spiced gin--wholly different from the flavors associated with spiced rum. For this cocktail I chose Monkey 47 to keep the drink dry like a champagne cocktail.

This cocktail comes from Smuggler's Cove. The Hinky Dink's reference points to the 30's vintage Tiki bar in Oakland, California. The drink itself was invented in the 1980s. Better modern rums and gins are now available, so a drink like this gets a facelift with Monkey 47 dry gin and Vitae modern rum.

• 1 oz. blended lightly aged (white) rum (Vitae Platinum used)
• 1 oz. dry gin (Monkey 47 used)
• 1 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. passionfruit syrup
• 1/2 oz. apricot liqueur
• 2 oz. sparkling wine
• mint sprig/ flower garnish

Combine all ingredients except sparkling wine and mint sprig in a blender with crushed ice. Flash blend and open pour into a large snifter or wine glass with the two ounces of sparkling wine in it. Garnish with mint or flowers.

Josiah's Bay Float (Revisited With Pineapple Shell Cup)

I had previously tackled this cocktail and the Baracuda #1 in the New York Bartender's Guide several years ago. It is amazing, as you'd expect with rum, sparkling wine and Galliano, which gives the drink a smooth and slightly anise spice flavor. It is amazing how suitable Galliano is to tropical cocktails.

This time I wanted to take up the suggestion of making the drink in a pineapple shell. I lucked out when I got a moderately ripe pineapple that was easy to carve up. You basically cut the leafy top off, several inches down at the point where the fruit is widest. The bottom two thirds of the pineapple will make up the container with the drink. Using a sharp knife, cut a circle approximately one inch inside the shell, leaving a good portion of the fruit as the wall of the container. Cut diagonally inward in a circle to remove a cone-shaped segment of the core. The remaining core and fruit can be scooped out with a spoon, but leave more than two inches in the bottom of the container space.

If the pineapple sits a little lopsided, you can even it out by cutting into the base of the fruit, but this only works if you left plenty of room beneath the container space or else you end up with a hole in your container.

Use the pineapple container right away or freeze the pineapple for up to a week to use it when you want to.

Here's the recipe again:

• 1 oz. gold rum
• 1/2 oz. Galliano
• 1 oz. pineapple juice
• 2 tsp. sugar syrup
• 2 tsp. lime juice
• champagne or sparkling wine
• lime slice
• maraschino cherry
• hollowed out pineapple shell (optional)

Combine all ingredients except champagne, lime slice and maraschino cherry in a blender with ice. Blend until smooth and pour into a hollowed out pineapple shell or hurricane glass. Add champagne and stir gently.

(Simple Times) Blueberry Lemonade Punch

My sister gave me a bottle of Blueberry Lemonade Simple Times mixer. This is awesome, especially when it comes to making a quick cocktail or punch while traveling for the holidays. You don't have time to shop for ingredients or count on someone else's bar to furnish what you need for a punch. So Simple Times is really a time saver that simplifies your mixing life.

This was a basic punch that went off really well with family members. All it took three cups of gin, three quarters of the Simple Times lemonade bottle, a liter of soda water and lemon slices. For extra garnish I made ice blocks with blueberries and cranberries frozen in them.