By David T. Valentin
Galentine’s is just around the corner this Monday. So as you get your dinner plans ready, your movie chosen, and your snacks, don’t forget an added bonus to your plans—drinks!
Now, I know that sometimes drinks can be a hassle, with all the fancy ingredients and all. But these drinks—that I tested at my own early Galentine’s day gathering—are only just a few ingredients and they’re also easy to get.
These recipes don’t belong to me! But the recipes I do have here are tweaked to my taste. As always is the case with recipes, you can also tweak it to your own taste. Go crazy, why not?
Raspberry Gin Sour
The Raspberry Gin Sour is a very simple drink, consisting of only four simple ingredients. It’s tart, sweet and, if made correctly, you won’t taste any of the alcohol. I particularly like this drink because it’s incredibly pretty, but you can also tweak it to feature some tasty fresh ingredients.
The Raspberry Gin Sour is:
1.5oz gin (any gin will do, but Plymouth gin works really well for its floral tastes)
.5oz fresh lemon (or sweet and sour mix if you’re feeling a bit lazy in squeezing the lemons)
1oz or .5 oz of Raspberry syrup or Grenadine syrup (I like the flavor, so)
1 egg white (could be from an egg, or you can just buy egg white in a carton)
First, you add everything together without ice and add the egg white last. Give it a dry shake, but not too hard! The dry shake emulsifies the egg white and gives the cocktail a thicker texture and a nice foam when poured. But if oyu shake it too much, it will spill.
Then, add some ice, give a few shakes, and then strain into a cup of your choosing!
If you’d like to make a mocktail version of this, add everything but the gin. I would strain this into a glass and then add carbonation with a plain soda or perhaps to add extra raspberry you can add raspberry flavored seltzer!
Apparently, they also have non-alcoholic gin on Amazon, which is apparently a thing that I didn’t know about until about a minute ago.
The Lavender Haze Martini
This one I found on TikTok from user Shannon_tevis, though other people have different recipes for this, I actually really like this recipe for a few reasons. The ingredients play off on the natural floral flavors of the gin and gives the drink an almost very refreshing, spring time vibe. Although it’s winter, I think it plays into the theme of flowers for Galetine’s Day. This is a bit of a sweet drink, so I’ve tweaked the recipe to be slightly less sweet.
1.5oz Empress Gin
.5oz of fresh lemon juice (or sweet and sour mix)
.5oz of lavender syrup
.5oz of elderflower liquer
Place all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until chilled.
To make this drink a lot more refreshing, you can add club soda to dilute the sweetness of the drink if you’d like since it is a bit of a lot on the mouth feel. With club soda, this also makes it the perfect summer drink to sip outside, in the pool, or even prepare for a Springtime picnic! Club soda kind of turns the drink into a lavender Tom Collins, but who really cares?
The elderflower is very important. The elderflower adds a complexity to the drink that just a lavender, gin, and lemon juice drink just doesn’t have.
Enzoni
If you’re a fan of bitter drinks, and the Negroni, and a refreshing fruit drink, an Enzoni. I haven’t tried this drink, but I do want to. It’s also a very pretty pink color and a perfect, refreshing bitter drink for that one friend in your group who likes bitter drinks.
Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker. Add ice last.
4 grapes, muddled
1oz of gin
1oz of Campari
¾oz of lemon juice
.5oz simple syrup
Strain into a highball glass with glass and enjoy!