Whenever I hosted friends I would stand and shake for an entire evening, cocktail after cocktail. Fun, but exhausting. A few years ago a good friend said I’m not allowed to make cocktails when I host them unless I find a technique that would allow me not to spend the entire evening in the kitchen making them. I researched a bit, and found a beautiful scalable solution - which I’ve been using ever since whenever I make more than one cocktail.

The Secret Trick

Only one thing is needed - a blender that can handle ice. Put all the cocktail ingredients in the blender, with one ice cube (more about ice will be in a separate post), and blend. This method allows us to do everything shaking does: aerate the cocktail (the spinning), cool it and dilute it (through the ice).

When is this method less suitable?

• Stirred cocktails - this is essentially a shaking method, so we wouldn’t make a cocktail like old-fashioned this way, because it would dilute and aerate it more than we’d want.
• Cocktails that start with muddling hard things (cucumber, mint leaves, basil leaves, banana, pineapple) - it will grind the ingredients finer than we would shake them, and then it will also take a lot of time to strain and mainly - it hurts the cocktail’s balance. In such cases, it’s better to introduce these flavors in other ways (squeeze, make appropriate syrup, etc.)

A perfect aperitif cocktail for this technique:

ISLAND WINE

• 75 ml white vermouth
• 22.5 ml lime juice
• 15 ml passion fruit syrup
• 2-3 dashes of Angostura bitters

Notes

There are three types of vermouths - here we use white, which is relatively sweet. There are excellent white vermouths that cost up to 40 shekels, my favorite is Dolin.

Passion Fruit Syrup

Make simple syrup in a 1:1 ratio with sugar and water, then add fresh/frozen passion fruit. Really according to feeling I sometimes also use passion fruit liqueur and it’s great