With holiday party season in full swing, entertaining expert Mark Addison, author of the award-winning book, COCKTAIL CHAMELEON, shares his essential holiday party entertaining tips and festive cocktails that are sure-fire party pleasers! Whether you are doing a small New Year’s Eve gathering or a rocking party for everyone, your guests deserve to have some great cocktails and you deserve to have fun at your own party! (That’s a novelty, right?)
Here’s Mark Addison’s tip #1:
Learn to make (and taste) 4 guaranteed crowd-pleaser cocktails!
4 Cocktail Chameleon Holiday Cocktails:
Cranberry Sauce Punch, Cranberry Champagne Cocktail, Mountain Mule, The Marktini 2.0
Cocktail recipes and all photos are courtesy of Cocktail Chameleon!
Holiday Parties require more time from the host and therefore a signature cocktail that serves multiple guests or one that can be scaled up into a pitcher with minimal effort on the hosts’ part to serve are ideal for holiday entertaining; obviously punches, and even martini’s or champagne cocktails that can be served in a variety of glassware are great options to mix-and-match. These surely work for intimate gatherings as well, but more detailed cocktails with elaborate garnishes in specific glassware is best for smaller groups.
These are the 3 most important aspects of cocktail making…
- A good recipe with quality ingredients:
-A truly successful cocktail is all about proportions and requires a deft hand with sweet, tart, bitter and spirits. The right balance is about flavors that complement—and never overwhelm—one another. - Proper glassware: Part tradition, part common sense and part personal style, your choice of glass should never be incidental. It’s a key element in the presentation of a carefully considered cocktail.
- The name says it all – A good name will not carry a poor drink to success; but a good name attached to a good drink will catapult your drink to the greatest heights of popularity.
—Tell It Like It Is – This is a very literal approach
—Personal Experience – a memory that the cocktail evokes
—The Locale– Naming a cocktail after a geographical location
—Pop Culture & Events – Movies, Literature, holidays and other timely events, both past and present.
—The Namesake – a person (yourself) or celebrity of past or present.
—Holiday-themed Cocktail Collection images
4 GUARANTEED CROWD-PLEASER COCKTAILS
Cranberry Sauce Punch
While dinner’s in the oven, offer a round or two of this elegant punch, the perfect herald of delicious things to come. Based on a jammy swirl of cranberries, spices and orange juice, it’s reminiscent of everyone’s favorite holiday condiment. Top it off with good Champagne and the gratitude will flow.
Ingredients
1/2 cup frozen cranberries
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
2 cloves
1 star anise pod
1 cardamom pod (optional)
1 cinnamon stick
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp grated orange zest
3 cups fresh orange juice
1 bottle chilled champagne
Garnish:
8 orange peels
24 spiked cranberries
Tools & Materials
2-quart saucepan
Large glass pitcher
Eight 11-oz wine glasses
Directions
-
In the saucepan, combine the cranberries, sugars, spices, 2 Tbsp water, and orange zest and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely.
-
Add 1 1/2 cups of the orange juice to the pan and stir to combine, scraping down the sides. Strain into the pitcher, add the remaining orange juice and refrigerate until ready to serve.
-
To serve, pour 2 1/2 oz of the cranberry-orange juice into each of the glasses and top with 2 1/2 oz of the chilled champagne. Garnish each glass with an orange peel and spike cranberries.
Cranberry Champagne Cocktail
This cocktail makes a wonderful welcome at Thanksgiving and other holiday celebrations. Prepare it ahead and all that’s required is to add chilled Champagne as your guests arrive. Create a tart infusion by soaking frozen cranberries in vodka and orange liqueur, then use the “drunken” cranberries as a garnish.
- Yield: 5 oz, Serves 1
The Cranberry Cocktail – found in the champagne chapter of Cocktail Chameleon – is the perfect make-ahead drink for holiday parties. Prep the ingredients and just add chilled champagne as guests arrive!
Ingredients
1 oz Cranberry Liqueur
2 dashes orange bitters
4 oz champagne, chilled
3-5 spiked Cranberries (for garnish)
Tools & Materials
Cocktail pick
8 oz flute
Directions
-
Pour the liqueur into the flute, add the bitters, and top with the champagne.
-
Garnish with a cocktail pick loaded with the cranberries.
Find the full recipe in the “Punch” chapter of Cocktail Chameleon.
Mountain Mule
This variation on the popular Moscow Mule was dreamt up in the Green Mountains of Vermont and inspired by flavors from around the world. Mark Addison’s homemade Vermont maple syrup adds a faintly smoky swirl of sweetness to the spicy Northern Italian amaro and vibrant Polish rye vodka for a cocktail with a worldly twist on the classic.
- Level of Difficulty–easy
- Yield: 6 oz., serves 1
Ingredients
1 1/2 oz. Chopin Rye Vodka
1/2 oz. Amaro Montenegro
1/2 oz. Vermont maple syrup
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
3 oz. ginger beer
garnish:
1 lime wedge
1 cinnamon stick
Tools & Materials
Cocktail shaker
Directions:
-
Fill the shaker with ice and add the vodka, amaro, maple syrup and lime juice, shaking until well chilled.
Pour into the glass and top with the ginger beer.
Garnish with the lime wedge and cinnamon stick
The Marktini 2.0
This signature martini is never out of place at a cocktail party. It’s ideal to scale up for a pitcher and can even be made into a punch with the addition of Champagne. Use this recipe as a point of departure to come up with your own variation and name it after yourself.
- Level of Difficulty: easy
- Yield: 4 1/2 oz., serves 1; or scale up for a pitcher
Who thought this signature martini could have been perfected… but indeed it has… introducing The Marktini 2.0! That’s the great thing about a well-balanced cocktail recipe; it can always be adapted to include new ingredients for an updated version.
Here we’ve included Amaro Montenegro and Chopin Rye Vodka to update the flavor profile resulting in a more vibrant and spicy version of the original. It’s an ideal cocktail to scale up for a pitcher to make your next party stress-free so you can get out from behind the bar and have fun with your guests. After all…
“Its called entertainng for a reason, you get ot have fun while you do it” – Mark Addison
Ingredients
1 1/2 oz. Chopin Rye Vodka
1/2 oz. Amaro Montenegro
1 oz. orange simple syrup
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
1 oz. pomegranate juice
1 orange peel curl
Tools & Materials
Cocktail shaker
Strainer
Directions
-
Fill the shaker with ice and add all the ingredients, shaking until well chilled.
Strain into the chilled glass.
Garnish with the orange curl.
About Mark Addison & Cocktail Chameleon*:
Author, Designer and Entertaining expert Mark Addison has spent a lifetime dreaming up elaborate events and other spectacles, often with a signature drink in the mix to help fuel the festivities. In Cocktail Chameleon, he provides 12 variations on 12 classic cocktails, starting with a lesson on the fundamentals of each drink (proportions, technique, and ingredients) before sharing the secrets of his own recipes.
Addison’s ultimate goal: to inspire you to create your own unforgettable Signature Cocktails.
Cheers!
* Cocktail Chameleon is the winner of the”Best Cocktail Book in the US”
“Best in the World” Silver Medal at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
“Top 10 Cocktail Books” by Tales of the Cocktails’ “Spirited Awards”
Selected for the J.P. Morgan Summer Reading Lis,t was voted “The Hostess Gift of the Season” two years running by KD Hamptons
COCKTAIL CHAMELEON is the ideal Host & Hostess Gift and the perfect gift for all the Cocktail Lovers on your holiday shopping list, so give the gift of Holiday Cheers!
For Mark Addison’s “Best in the World” award-winning* book, “Cocktail Chameleon” and a world of cocktail resources visit…
www.CocktailChameleon.com
Take 20% off ALL Cocktail Chameleon* products on MarkAddison.com and on Amazon!**
*SIGNED EDITIONS of Cocktail Chameleon exclusive at MarkAddison.com
Cocktail Chameleon can also be purchased on Amazon.
Follow Mark Addison on these social channels::
Twitter: https://twitter.com/markaddison
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mark_addison/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/markaddison/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/markaddison
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/markaddisonhttps://vimeo.com/markaddison
LOVE what I am seeing in the awesomeness of this book as well as these amazing cocktails. Wow! You need this book for your New Year’s Eve Party!
Stevie Wilson,
LA-Story.com
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