Halloween Coctails

Watch out! Those Zombies can kill you.

Need cocktails for Halloween? Look no further. Here is a great selection of Halloween cocktail articles.  Have a great Halloween and drink responsibly. 

Skulled Holiday Cider delivers a Halloween treat

It’s getting close to Halloween in Salt Lake City.  The frost is on the pumpkin, and there was ice on my pond this morning.  When an email arrived about making Halloween cocktails with Crystal Head® Vodka (yes, that’s the one that comes in a bottle that looks like a glass skull), it was obviously an idea whose time had come.  Crystal Head® Vodka (CS# 034152, $50) uses ancient glacial water from an aquifer in Newfoundland, Canada, and is filtered through 500-million year-old quartz crystals (known as Herkimer diamonds) after being distilled four times.  Created with the participation of screen legend Dan Aykroyd, Crystal Head contains “absolutely no additives.” It’s probably the purist Vodka around, and just about the smoothest I have had.  If you want to be impressed, read the legend of Crystal Head. 

One of my earliest memories of Halloween is going to a neighborhood Halloween party at the local FOP Hall where they served apple cider and powdered sugar doughnuts, so when I saw a cocktail recipe with apple cider in it, I was hooked.  Call it a nostalgia thing.  This drink is easy to make and surprisingly good, as a bonus, it will work as a summer cooler as well as a Halloween drink. The spiciness of the Ginger Ale plays off well against the vanilla liqueur, while the Angostura Bitters adds some depth.  Be sure to give this one a try.  If you enjoy your Skulled Holiday Cider, think of the Vodka Martini you could stir up with this great vodka.

Click here for all of my Halloween cocktails.

Skulled Holiday Cider

• 1 1/2 oz. Crystal Head Vodka
• 1/2 oz. vanilla liqueur
• 1 oz. apple cider
• Dash of Angostura Bitters
• Ginger Ale

Add the ingredients in the order listed to a highball glass filled with ice. Give a quick stir and garnish with an apple slice on the rim or inside the glass.

Chambord Candy Apple Martini is a treat for Halloween

Salt Lake City is getting ready for Halloween.  According to my son and his GF, one of the picks this year is the Fort Douglas Cemetery tour, late the afternoon of October 29, featuring Clem, the fort’s resident ghost.  Another way to celebrate Halloween is with a Halloween cocktail.  One pick that popped up in my email this year is the Chambord Candy Apple Martini, featuring Chambord® Black Raspberry Liqueur.  Chambord Liqueur (inspired by the raspberry liqueur produced in the Loire Valley of France 400 years ago, and still made on the grounds of an historic chateau) is an infusion of raspberries and blackberries with the exotic flavors of black raspberries, black currant, Madagascar vanilla and Cognac.  Chambord is available in Utah (CS# 064676) for $33.  Chambord is an extremely versatile liqueur, doing yeoman service in cocktails like the Chambord Margarita Royale, a delicious variation on the classic Margarita.

Tuaca® is a “vanilla citrus liqueur” that is golden brown in color, originated in Firenze 500 years ago, and is available in Utah today.  Its ingredients include brandy, citrus (orange?), and vanilla. Tuaca is sweet tasting, with vanilla as the dominant flavor.  It’s available in Utah (CS# 077786) for $26.  Even though you only need a splash for the Chambord Candy Apple Martini, it’s worth picking up a bottle so you can try a Tuaca Tropical Margarita when Margarita season comes around again.  (Yes, it’s always Margarita season.)

Click here for all of my Halloween cocktails.

Chambord Candy Apple Martini

• 1 oz. Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur
• 1 oz. Finlandia Vodka
• 3/4 oz. Apple Schnapps
• Splash of Tuaca Liqueur

Rim a cocktail glass with caramel (for a Halloween effect, use enough that it runs a little, but not so much that it drips off the glass). Add ingredients to a mixing glass 2/3 full of ice, stir until well chilled, and strain into the glass. Garnish with an apple slice.

Cocktails for Halloween and beyond the graveyard

Snow in the valley gave evidence to Salt Lake City residents that winter is on the way.  While it may warm up a little, you may be sure that colder nights are in store for us.  What better way to fortify yourself for a cold autumn (or winter) night than a Hot Rum Toddy?   Not really Halloween related, this hot cocktail is easy to make (the essential ingredient is some good dark rum), and a reliable standby to have in your cocktail repertoire, especially if Halloween is cold and rainy (or snowy).  Be sure to check out my Examiner slideshow for photos and recipe cards for these cocktails, or click through the links below for the full-length articles.  Now for the serious business of Halloween.

Vampires are all the rage these days, and everyone knows that the best way to put down a vampire is with a stake through the heart.  What, you are probably asking, is the best way to put down a Halloween cocktail?  

What should you do if you see a Halloween cocktail lurching toward you down a lonely road on a cold, dark, moonless night?  When, after you’ve run yourself to exhaustion and are leaning against a stone wall to catch your breath, you realize it’s the wall around the graveyard and scream…  and the cocktail continues to draw inexorably nearer and nearer…  What do you do?  Experience shows that the most effective action is to grasp it firmly by its scrawny neck and toss it down before it can attack.  And that, children (only if over 21), is the best way to handle an aggressive cocktail.

The first Halloween cocktail is a little tame, but may bring back childhood memories: the Bob for Apples.  What’s not to like about Rum, cinnamon, and apples?  Think of Mom’s homemade apple pie with a kick (and with a spider garnish).

Although it sounds horrid, the Spider’s Venom cocktail actually verges on the sweet.  The Spider Venom (a distant relative of the Piña Colada) should be drunk from a specially prepared cocktail glass as a charm to protect you from the venom. 

It pays to keep an eye out for the Bloodshot cocktail when walking past the graveyard at night.  Watch out, having been evicted from its own socket, this roguish cocktail’s roving eyeball may want to settle in one of yours.

If you should manage to escape the graveyard intact and alive (though just barely) and make it home, the best way to get your blood flowing again (but not too much, you don’t want to attract attention from the wrong sort of undead) is with a Corpse Reviver.  This beauty doesn’t look like a Halloween cocktail, but it’s sure to cure what ails you.  The medley of flavors in this cocktail is most enjoyable, so give it a try at your Halloween soirée. 

Last, and far from the least, is the Zombie, a cocktail that will knock you on your ass if you’re not careful or don’t show it the proper respect, a cocktail whose namesake must have had a Corpse Reviver poured into it, for there’s no other plausible explanation for its existence.  Don’t be seduced into having several, or think you’ll have “just one more,” or you may end up a zombie yourself.

Happy Halloween!

Five stakes through your heart: a handful of Halloween cocktails

The best way to put down a vampire is with a stake through the heart. What, you are probably asking, is the best way to put down a Halloween cocktail? What should you do if you see a Halloween cocktail lurching toward you down a lonely road on a cold, dark, moonless night? When, after you’ve run yourself to exhaustion and are leaning against a stone wall to catch your breath, you realize it’s the wall around the graveyard and scream… and the cocktail continues to draw inexorably nearer and nearer… What do you do? Experience shows that the most effective action is to grasp it firmly by its scrawny neck and toss it down before it can attack. And that, children (only if over 21), is the best way to handle an aggressive cocktail. Feel free to click the links below, or view the slideshow.

The first Halloween cocktail is one even your mother would enjoy, the Bob for Apples. What’s not to like about Rum, cinnamon, and apples? Think of Mom’s homemade apple pie with a kick (and with a spider garnish).

Although it sounds horrid, the Spider’s Venom cocktail actually verges on the sweet. The Spider Venom (a distant relative of the Piña Colada) should be drunk from a specially prepared cocktail glass as a charm to protect you from the venom.

It pays to keep an eye out for the Bloodshot cocktail when walking past the graveyard at night. Watch out, having been evicted from its own socket, this roguish cocktail’s roving eyeball may want to settle in one of yours.

If you should manage to escape the graveyard intact and alive (though just barely) and make it home, the best way to get your blood flowing again (but not too much, you don’t want to attract the wrong sort of undead) is with a Corpse Reviver. This beauty doesn’t look like a Halloween cocktail, but it’s sure to cure what ails you. The medley of flavors in this cocktail is very enjoyable, so give it a try at your Halloween soirée.

Last, and far from the least, is the Zombie, a cocktail that will knock you on your ass if you’re not careful or don’t show it the proper respect, a cocktail whose namesake must have had a Corpse Reviver poured into it, for there’s no other plausible explanation for its existence. Don’t be seduced into having several, or think you’ll have “just one more,” or you may end up a zombie yourself.

The Zombie: a cocktail to make you feel like the living dead

What would Halloween be without zombies? Zombie cocktails, that is. If there was ever a drink that could make you feel like one of the living dead, this is it. This is one cocktail where you should definitely limit yourself to just one to better preserve both your health and your dignity. The Zombie has been attributed to Don the Beachcomber, but some say the first zombie arose when a defrocked, Haitian priest (no offense intended to any group mentioned in this post) poured a Corpse Reviver cocktail into a fresh corpse. Furthermore, there is evidence that Zombies (cocktails, that is) can make you lose your memory. My memories of my Zombie drinking days are fuzzy; so it’s a good bet that I never stopped at just one, but now age and wisdom have both fallen upon me (age perhaps more than wisdom), so there is probably just one Zombie in the cards for me tonight. As the bottom of the glass approaches, however, I find myself noticing that all of the bottles are still open and waiting for me on the bar…

A Zombie cocktail is either a double or a triple, but who’s counting? Begin with rum: an ounce each of light, gold, and dark. (You may combine the light and gold into two ounces of one or the other if you’re short (on rum) or lazy, but you must have one or the other of those two and a dark rum (Gosling’s® is good).) Then a half ounce of Crème de Noyau (almond) or Amaretto (if that’s all you have). (Believe me, after you’ve drunk your Zombie you won’t care which one you used). The classic Zombie then calls for a half an ounce of Bacardi® 151 to be floated on top, but dark rum is an acceptable substitute and will moderate your intake of alcohol. As for the glass, size matters. The Zombie in the beautiful photograph featured here is in a Hurricane glass. That glass left little room for the addition of OJ and Dark Rum, so you can guess which one won out. If there was still to be room for the dark rum, only about ½ oz of OJ could be (and was) used (by now you have probably realized that the OJ is not perhaps viewed as an essential ingredient). You might want to use a Collins glass or another, larger, glass to make room for more OJ if you’re trying to increase your Vitamin-C intake.

Zombie Cocktail

1 oz Light Rum (your favorite)

1 oz Gold Rum (ditto)

1 oz Dark Rum (Goslings® works well)

½ oz Crème de Noyau (or Amaretto)

1 oz Lime Juice, freshly squeezed

1 tsp Simple syrup (or substitute ½ oz Grenadine)

1-4 oz Orange juice

½ oz Bacardi® 151 or more Dark Rum

Pour all ingredients except the Orange juice and the 151 into a shaker half full of ice. Shake like the living dead are really after you. Fill the glass half full of ice (cubed or cracked) and strain the mixture from the shaker into the glass. Add ice to almost fill the glass, leaving room for the desired amount of OJ and the 151. Pour almost as much Orange juice as will fit into the glass and stir, being careful to leave room for the 151. Float the 151 on top, garnish with a cherry (or a slice of lime or orange), and serve with a black straw in honor of the dead on All Souls Eve. I would say “Santé,” but that kind of goes against the sprit of the thing…

The Bob for Apples cocktail – a recipe with ups and downs

Do you remember Halloween when you were a kid? On Halloween, of course, we always went trick-or-treating, but the Saturday before Halloween we used to go to the Halloween party at the F.O.P. hall. For refreshments, they had apple cider and fresh donuts coated with powdered sugar. Games were normal party games like pin the tail on the donkey and (the ever popular) bobbing for apples in a tub of ice-water. Brrr, that water was cold. Today my Halloween tastes are more inclined toward cocktails (no, they didn’t give us cocktails at the F.O.P. hall). Some might think, however, that the Spider Venom cocktail with its spider garnish is a little extreme, even for Halloween. For those, I have developed Bob for Apples, a Halloween treat that is not in the least bit scary and should help you channel the spirit of Halloween past.

A cocktail named Bob for Apples must contain (drum roll) some apple, so the apple juice was a no-brainer. A few variations using vodka didn’t quite work, so I switched to rum. It still lacked a little kick, so I added some Sour Apple Pucker and bitters for depth. The cocktail is a little dry, but the cinnamon sugar offsets that as you drink it, in addition to spicing it up a bit. Don’t skip the cinnamon sugar; it’s an important contributor to the overall taste of the cocktail. In case you’re too lazy to bother with it, you need to add a little simple syrup and cinnamon to the mix to balance the drink.

Bob for Apples

1 ½ oz light Rum

¼ oz Sour Apple Pucker

1 oz Apple Juice

1 dash (about 2 drops) Angostura Bitters

Rim a cocktail glass with cinnamon sugar and put it in the freezer. Combine the ingredients with ice in a mixing glass and stir briskly for as long it would take you to bob an apple out of a tub of ice-water. Strain into the prepared glass and garnish with a Maraschino cherry. Sip your way around the rim while musing on Halloween d’antan.

Spider Venom cocktail – a recipe for Halloween horror

One thing the teachers at my school were adamant about was that we should never, never drink warm spider venom. There was a rumor that a kid in the fourth grade had done just that, but the stories then diverged and got vague as to exactly how the kid had died… or had he? That’s why the Spider Venom cocktail should be drunk ice-cold. Drink it fast and never, ever let it get warm. The Spider Venom (a distant relative of the Piña Colada) should be drunk from a specially prepared cocktail glass as a charm to protect you from the venom. If it seems too sweet, vary the amount of lime juice a little to balance the sweetness of the cocoanut and Rum to get the taste you like.

Preparing the glass for this creepy concoction is not as difficult as you might think, and well worth the effort for the chilling affect it can have on your friends. Prepare several glasses and have them ready in the freezer when your guests arrive. Pour some chocolate syrup into a small bowl. You can also use Smuckers® Magic Shell as shown here; it will harden and last longer, not deteriorating into a messy looking, smeared web that would shame any self-respecting spider as the cocktail is consumed, but Hershey’s ® Syrup works well, too. Using a small paint brush, draw the radii first. Add the connectors, trying to have them “droop” consistently so the web will have a symmetrical appearance. If you don’t have any fine enough paint brushes, you can use a stirrer straw. You could also try squirting the chocolate syrup onto the chilled glass if you have a squeeze bottle with a nozzle that is small enough. (Warning: too much syrup in the glass can result in a sugar high.) Put the glasses in the freezer until you are ready to serve.

Spider Venom

2 oz light Rum

½ to 1 oz (one good, healthy squirt) Coco Reál® Cream of Coconut

1 tsp freshly squeezed Lime juice

Prepare a glass as described above and keep it in the freezer. Add the ingredients to an empty mixing glass or shaker bottom. Stir briskly to dissolve the Coco Reál. Fill about half full of ice, put on the top, and shake like your life depends on it, as well it may. (Remember: never drink warm spider venom.) Get the prepared glass from the freezer and strain the drink into it. Add a dash of grenadine; it will settle to the bottom like a drop of blood. Garnish with a spider (preferably artificial or deceased). Provide small spoons for those with a sweet tooth who want to eat the chocolate web.

Bloodshot Cocktail – an eyeful of a recipe for Halloween terror

Have you ever faced a night of dread, fearing what you would feel when you woke in the morning? Well the Bloodshot cocktail can give you just such a night if you have too many, so keep a bleary eye on your drink tally. This recipe for disaster tastes so good and goes down so easily that it’s easy to over indulge (assuming that you like Cassis the way I do; my motto is “a Kir a day keeps the doctor away.”) Conceived in a fit of lust for Halloween blood and gore and perfected in a single evening of over-consumption, this watchful cocktail would scream in terror as it approached your glistening eye-teeth and greedy gullet if it only had a mouth. Do the humane thing and eat its bloodshot eye first so it can’t see what’s coming…

The Bloodshot is best served in a tall, narrow glass so you can skewer its weeping eyeball on a cocktail pick and perch it above the drink. My eyeballs (see photo) are constructed from a Maraschino cherry for the ball, and a half of a dried Montmorency cherry for the pupil (a whole dried cherry is a little too large, you could substitute a raisin). Split the Maraschino just enough to jam the pupil in and then skewer it. You will need to balance the eyeball so that it is either looking up or tilting toward the drinker, which is harder to do. There are other eyeball construction techniques on the web, just pick one that looks gross enough and be sure it looks good and red. Use you favorite mixed-drink vodka (Gordon’s is a steal at $10/bottle). Don’t go too cheap on the Crème de Cassis (unless you like the taste of cough syrup). In Utah, you will have to spend over $20 a bottle for Cartron to get something decent. If this cocktail doesn’t suit your Halloween taste, try a Corpse Reviver.

Bloodshot

1 ½ oz Vodka

¼ oz Crème de Cassis

1 tsp freshly squeezed lime juice

Make and skewer an eyeball (see above). Add ingredients to a mixing glass half full of ice. Stir for as long as it would take for a blind zombie seeking eyeballs to chase you half a block. Strain into a shot glass (2 to 2 ½ oz) and perch the Bloodshot eyeball on top. Here’s looking at you, kid.

Get stirring with the Corpse Reviver Cocktail

The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) continues to be a treasure trove of interesting cocktails. Thumbing through it on a day off resulted in the discovery of an amusing sketch of “the beautiful Lady Cynthia, after imbibing a Corpse Reviver Cocktail.” The sketch of red-faced Lady Cynthia piqued my interest. For some unknown reason, the recipe for the Corpse Reviver turned out to be thirty pages away, and it came with the advice that a Corpse Reviver could be “taken before 11 a.m., or whenever steam and energy are needed.” A quick glance at the clock told me that a little fast action would get me in just under the wire, and all the ingredients were available. Hopefully, you invested in some apple jack when you tried out the Jack Rose, and you should have some Italian Vermouth around the house.

There are a variety of Corpse Reviver cocktail recipes to be found on the web (there are two in the Savoy book alone), and they are sometimes classified under the “hair of the dog” type of hangover cure. You can be the judge of that. The blend of flavors in this cocktail is enjoyable, so give it a try. With Halloween just around the corner, this is one cocktail recipe we will have to revisit. The following recipe is faithful in proportion to the Savoy, but you should, as usual, play around with proportions to get the right taste for you.

Corpse Reviver (No. 1)

1 ½ oz Cognac or Brandy

¾ oz Calvados or Apple jack

¾ oz Italian Vermouth

Combine ingredients with cracked ice in a mixing glass. Stir briskly until it’s far colder than a (shudder) corpse. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon. Prepare yourself for a high energy day!