Christmas Bacardi Cocktails

 

Christmas is right around the corner. So much of what I associate with Christmas and the holidays revolves around smell and taste: roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mint, cinnamon and spice. So given that there's so much of the feeling of Christmas associated with taste, you'd think it's be easy to make Christmassy cocktails: and you'd be right! However, I wouldn't advise a turkey flavoured one.

I took a trip to our local Morrisons, which was looking suitably festive, with the aim of making two cocktails: a warm one for the cold winter nights and a cold one that could be served with Christmas dinner.

 The first thing I picked up, to be used in both cocktails, was the Bacardi!

So many of the smells and tastes associated with Christmas come from spices, so I headed to the spice aisle next and picked up some cinnamon sticks and some mulled wine spices. If you were feeling particularly adventurous you could try and make your own blend with cloves, cinnamon and dried fruit but if you're like me you'll have no time for that at this time of year and these sachets are just as good and twice as easy.

Some sugar: brown goes best with the hot drink.

Some fruit juices: cranberry and cloudy apple. Sweet and Christmassy.

 And since Christmas is all about being decadent and indulging yourself, some whipped cream.

Since it was a cold night I came straight home and started making the hot cocktail!

Hot Mulled Apple Bacardi (makes 4 servings)

For this I heated up 1 litre of the cloudy apple juice in a pan and, once it started to boil, added one mulled wine sachet, which is pretty much a Christmassy teabag! We like cinammon in this house, so I threw in two cinammon sticks too and the juice and zest of half an orange.

I let the apple juice simmer for a few minutes to infuse and craftily put 50ml of Bacardi into a mug.

Once the sachet and sticks had been in the simmering apple juice for 5 minutes I poured 1/4 of the liquid (roughly 250ml) on top of my Bacardi and gave it a stir.

As I said we like things cinammonny in this house, so as a festive garnish I served with a cinnamon stick in the drink and topped with whipped cream.

Straight away the drink is so warming; firstly it's obviously hot but the warmth you get from the spices could heat you up by itself.

For the cold cocktail I went for a sweet and minty martini: The Candy Cane!

Stick a generous handful of ice in a cocktail shaker (and some in a martini glass to chill it)

Frost the rim of the martini glass by wetting it and turning upside down into a saucer of white sugar.

Add 50ml cranberry juice, 37.5ml Bacardi and 25ml Creme de Menthe Blanc* to the shaker and shake for 7 seconds. (Top trick to shaking cocktails, if you can't be bothered counting you can judge by feeling the side of the shaker, once it's fully mixed the side will get colder as the ice deteriorates.)

Strain into frosted martini glass and serve. It tastes like a candy cane, sweet and pepperminty!

*Creme de menthe blanc isn't necessarily the easiest spirit to find but there are alternatives. Normal creme de menthe would work but the green colouring kind of spoils the look. You could substitute for peppermint vodka. How do you make that?

Pack of these:

In a bottle of this:

Leave over night then strain!

The cocktails are really different but still both Christmassy. I can see the hot mulled apple cocktail being something we could enjoy on cold nights throughout the whole of December and I'm looking forward to trying the Candy Cane on my family at Christmas dinner.

What is your favourite Christmas cocktail?

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What I Wore Wednesday: Next Children's Clothes

I like to think that Blondie Boy is a trendy little dude; I know I don't let him wear just anything and I'd hope that he would turn his nose up at certain styles too. We are both big fans of Next Children's clothing so when Collective Bias™ asked us to head to Next to check out the children's clothes on offer we jumped at the chance.

I'm a big fan of Next as their clothes wear quite well but are also stylish; I love that their boy's clothes tend to be mini (but appropriate) versions of adult men's fashion trends. I'm not sure about the US but statement tee-shirts are huge in the UK right now. Basically it's just a tee shirt with one word across the front in a varsity style font.

I loved the dude tee. When I was probably about 8 in Ohio I desperately wanted to be a Valley Girl and said stuff like "Gag me with a credit card and put me into layaway" so dude has been part of my vocabulary for a long time. Unfortunately they didn't have Blondie Boy's size in stock when I visited so I'll just have to pop back again later to see if it comes in stock.

Honestly shopping for boy's clothes there usually aren't a lot of great options but I was spoiled for choice; look at how many shoes there were alone! There were so many options to choose from I was overwhelmed! I finally decided that I'd go with another current fashion trend that is also my favourite decade: the 90's. Short floral dresses, ripped jeans and high-tops (okay they are wedged now) have made a come back so I decided to put a twist on the 90's with Blondie Boy's look:

Doesn't he look like he fell out of a Kevin Smith movie? I LOVE this Nirvana t-shirt. First of all both NotBlondeHusband and I are big Nirvana fans (Blondie Boy is more into Pearl  Jam for now who I also love) but I love that Blondie Boy can be a mini rocker.  I chose the dark wash jeans for no other reason than I wear dark wash so he can too! The flannel shirt and backwards cap just give it that extra grunge feel.

Poor Blondie Boy; he's been asking me to do a photo-shoot on the front porch every day before school recently but I couldn't understand why he seemed so grumpy for this one. Normally he's a mega poser and break dancing; turns out he's sick and has been running a fever on and off since. Poor kid no wonder he looks pissed off!

While this is the outfit I picked there were so many other clothes I could have bought if Blondie Boy's closet wasn't already over-flowing. You can see all of my favourites from the Boy's section in my Next #CBias Google + album! Where do you normally shop for clothes for your children? Do you follow fashion or prefer to stick to practicality? What do you think generally about fashion trends for kids?

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This content has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® #CBias #SocialFabric. All opinions are my own; don't y'all know by now I only speak the truth?