Recipe: haunting Halloween cocktails

Shot to the Brain (pictured)

As the name suggests, this one is not so much a cocktail as a shot. A shot-tail, if you will.

Peach schnapps or sambuca
Irish cream liqueur
Grenadine/raspberry purée

Pour the schnapps to fill ¾ of the shot glass. Follow with the Irish cream liqueur by pouring it over the back of a spoon, forming a floating ‘brain’. Finally, gore it up with some ‘blood’: a teaspoon or so of Grenadine or raspberry purée.

Bloody Mary

Who could contemplate Halloween cocktails without this bucket of blood flooding their mind? These are only rough measurements, as with a Bloody Mary it’s all a matter of taste. Everyone’s recipe is different, but this is how I do it.

50ml vodka
150ml tomato juice
½ lemon
Worcester sauce
Tabasco sauce
Salt and pepper

Add the vodka to a highball glass. Top up with the chilled tomato juice, the juice from the lemon, a few sploshes of Worcester sauce and a few of Tabasco. Season with salt and pepper.

As vodka and tomato juice don’t emulsify very well, you’ll need to continuously stir this potion. Tradition is to do this with a celery stick but, as it’s Halloween, it makes sense to use one of those special Halloween cocktail stirrers, which are widely available around this time, and perhaps replace the salt with celery salt so you don’t lose that element. Bloody delicious.

Mar-ghoul-rita

The yellow of the tropical fruit juices and the blue of the citrusy Curaćao combine in this drink to produce a violently green ‘slime’. Don’t let the colour put you off though: this is magical.

25ml tequila (clear)
25ml blue Curaçao
25ml pineapple juice
25ml mango juice

For the glass (optional):

Lemon juice
Salt
Green food colouring

Prepare your margarita glass by wiping a wedge of lemon round the rim before dunking into salt that’s been mixed with a few drops of green food colouring. Place all the drink ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well and strain into the glass.

Cemetery soda

This fizzy cocktail still packs a punch, but with more mixer it will last you longer so you don’t get your freak on too much – perfect for you lightweight souls out there. And, what’s more, it resembles a swampy graveyard.

50ml rum
125ml Coca Cola
125ml orange juice

Pour the rum and orange juice into the glass, top up with coke and add some ice cubes. Chilling.

… An eye-catching garnish

The perfect garnish to any of these cocktails has to be the floating ‘eyeball’: cut a small hole in a lychee or peeled grape, fill with strawberry jam then stick the blueberry into the jam.