Tiki Drink for the Weekend: The Sweet Caroline

Ok, I know I’m a little slow on the draw this week for your Tiki Drink Recipe. Sometimes part of living the Tiki Lifestyle means sleeping until 2pm for no reason.

I made this one up, but I’m sure I’m not the first to mix these ingredients together. I call it a Sweet Caroline. It’s got a nice sweet taste, with citrus kick. Kind of like this girl named Caroline I used to know.

1 oz Midori
1 oz Amaretto
1 oz Sour Mix
Fill with Orange Juice

Pour over ice in a large glass and stir. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Pretty simple, very tasty! The sugars seem to make the booze hit your head faster than you’d think, so be careful with this one, kids.

-Tiki Chris reporting from under the table at Tiki Lounge Talk

Weekend Tiki Cocktail: Singapore Sling; Wreck Bar Tonight

Another great summer drink for your Tiki Bar is an old favorite…

The Singapore Sling

Even the name of this bright red cocktail evokes the essence of exotic, taking you to mysterious, far-away places without leaving your bar stool. Developed at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore around the turn of the century, a modified version of the original is still served there today.

Here’s the old fashioned version of the recipe, from back in the days when sophisticated cocktails meant sophisticated ingredients:

2 oz gin
3/4 oz Cherry Heering
2 tsp Benedictine
2 tsp Cointreau
2 oz pineapple juice
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
2 dashes pomegranate grenadine
1 dash Angostura bitters
Soda water
Maraschino cherry
Pineapple wedge
Orange wheel

Throw together everything except the soda and garnish in a shaker. (If you’re not sure which ingredients are the garnish, please put down the shaker and ask an adult to supervise.) Shake it up,and strain into a hurricane or highball glass with a few rocks of ice. Top it off with a splash soda water. Garnish with a cherry, a pineapple slice, and orange skewered on one of those little plastic pirate swords.

The Raffels Hotel in Singapore, Birthplace of the Singapore Sling

This less interesting but still very groovy tasting alternative is much more popular today, and a hell of a lot easier to concoct. Generally if you order a sling today, you’ll get a nice red gin drink. It’s good stuff.

1 dash  Cherry Liqueur
4 oz  Club Soda
1 oz  Gin
0.5 oz  Grenadine
0  cracked Ice
0  cubes Ice
2 oz  bottled Sour mix

Toss everything into the shaker except the soda and ice cubes and shake, shake, shake Senora. Strain over the rocks in a hurricane glass and ad the soda. Then garnish as above. Make sure you use the pirate sword or it’s not a sling. A little plastic monkey or mermaid on the side of the glass is an added bonus.

Speaking of Mermaids…

Mermaids at the Wreck Bar Tonight, 6:15pm, Fort Lauderdale Yankee Clipper Hotel

Mermaids at the Wreck Bar, Yankee Clipper

We’ll be sipping Singapore Slings at the Wreck Bar tonight as we watch the enchanting Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid and her pod of sea lovelies swimming it up in the hotel pool. It’s always fun to watch the mermaids do their underwater antics. If you’re Fort Lauderdale, stop on by!

-Tiki Chris Pinto reporting from behind the bar at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, in the kool little corner of my lanai.

The Original Mojito: Tiki Bar Cocktails for the Weekend

The Mojito

I’ve been drinking booze for a long time and have yet to find a cocktail as refreshing as The Mojito on a hot Florida day or steamy night.

This rum drink can be traced all the way back to the 16th century, but it’s a fact that the modern version was made famous by Havana, Cuba hotels and cocktail lounges. This was Earnest Hemmingway’s favorite cocktail, and he put away plenty of them at Sloppy Joe’s (the original) in Key West and La Bodeguita del medio in Cuba.

Here in Sunny South Florida one of our favorite rums to use is 10 Cane. You need a good quality white rum for this thing or it will taste like Sterno. Don’t skimp on the rum.

Here’s the drill:

1 teaspoon powdered sugar (simple syrup can be substituted)
Juice from 1 lime (2 ounces)
4 mint leaves
1 sprig of mint
2 oz GOOD White Rum
2 oz club soda or sparkling water

Here’s where making a cocktail goes from just mixing stuff together to being really fun. You get to muddle things. That’s right, muddle. Put the mint leaves, squeeze over the lime juice and pour the sugar into a taaaaal glass and gently muddle together for a few minutes until everything is nice and…well, muddled. You’ll know. Do it gently; you don’t have to destroy the leaves, or break the glass. Add ice, add the rum and top off with club soda. Stir gently with your most summery swizzle stick. Garnish with a mint sprig and a lime wheel. Umbrella is optional, unless you’re serving at your Tiki Bar, of course.

Some kats add a little bitters to cut down on the sweetness of this drink, but if you do it right it won’t be all that sweet to begin with. Of course if you’re lazy you can buy “Mojito Mix” and just add the rum, but what fun is that?

Well kids, that’s the perfect drink for an August day, eh? Aloha!
-Tiki Chris Pinto reporting from behind the Tiki Bar at Tiki Lounge Talk

Weekend Cocktails at the Tiki Bar: The Frozen Summer Slush

This recipe first caught my eye because I thought it said “Frozen Summer Lush”, which would have completely described a chick I knew back in my college days. Anyhoo, I thought we’d go for a thirst-quencher during this blazing hot summer weather. (Sorry to you people down-under where it’s winter).

I found this same recipe on several sites so I don’t know who to give credit to for inventing it. Apparently many people are making this claim. Then again, I recently saw a T-shirt company who was claiming to have brought Tiki Culture to southern California. Recently. Like, uh, dood, get your head out of your

As for me, I think I’ll say I brought Tiki Culture to South Florida. I’ve tried this claim on twitter and got wildly mild support. So yeah, ME, I did it. Not the guys at the Mai Kai, not the Mermaids at the wreck bar, not Elvis in Clambake, lil ole me has created the Tiki Ferver in South Florida. There.

Huh? The drink? What drink? Oh yeah, the recipe. Sorry, already knocked back a few.

The Frozen Summer Lush.
Eh, Slush.

How to concoct it:

Put the seven cups of water in a saucepan, and boil it up. Throw in the sugar and stir it in until dissolved; set aside to cool.

Now put the teabags in two cups of (more) boiling water, and let steep until the bags scream “let me out!”. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar water, tea, lemonade concentrate and orange juice concentrate. Take a sip of gin from the bottle. If it tastes good, Stir in gin. Take another sip just to be double sure.

Put the mixture in a freezer container and freeze overnight. To serve, scoop some into a tall, kool glass, and fill it up with club soda. mmmmmm. good stuff.

-Tiki Chris reporting from the frrreeezer at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, home of Tiki Lounge Talk, the Tiki Life & Tiki Culture Blog for jetsetter kats and cream-puff kittens.

The Manhattan: Weekend Cocktails at the Tiki Bar

Ready for the weekend kids? We sure are at the Tiki Bar! Since out last post was on some sophisticated Latin Jazz, lets Jazz the weekend up with some sophisticated cocktails…

The typical Manhattan calls for rye whiskey and sweet vermouth. Here are two twists on the original:

Bourbon Manhattan

3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 1/2 oz good bourbon whiskey (I’d go with Maker’s Mark)
1 dash bitters
1 maraschino cherry
1 twist orange peel

Pour the booze and bitters over the rocks and stir gently. Add the Cherry; twist the orange into the drink and ditch the peel. A little sweeter and smoother than the traditional drink.

The Manhattan Cocktail. Old-style is served in a rocks glass.

Southern Comfort Manhattan

1 1/2 oz. Southern Comfort
1/2 oz dry vermouth
dash bitters
Cherry

Stir with cracked ice, strain into a glass (also good on the rocks). Drop in the cherry and you’re good to go with a ’60s style cocktail that will make the southern belles melt.

Either of these splashes would be a great accompaniment to the sultry tunes presented in our previous post.

-Tiki Chris reporting from the Tiki Bar