The holidays are a time to make merriment, but stirring and shaking individual cocktails at your own cocktail party is a quick way to dull the magic. Our very own Jennifer Caballero, the FOOD LA LA Queenpin of Spirts, is dishing on her top five holiday cocktail tips to spark joy during a chaotic holiday season!
#1 Treasure Vessels: For those treasure hunters and antique lovers—whose homes are filled with family heirlooms or even Starbucks mugs that have been collected from trips across the world—get creative with the vessel you serve your cocktails in. They can mismatch, they can be unconventional. In the 1920s during Prohibition, booze was even served in teacups to disguise the rebellious liquid! Mon dieu!
#2 The Quick Chill: For all the Busy Bees who do a million things but forget to chill the champagne before the guests arrive (Lindsay has done this), employ this 5-minute Hail Mary: Put bottles of champagne in a large container (it might even be a clean trash can or a bathtub if you have a ton of people coming over), then fill with ice, add some water, and sprinkle generously with salt (regular table salt is fine, don’t waste the good stuff here!). Let sit and before you can sing the 12 Days of Christmas, your champagne will be cold.
#3 Get Festive: For those who love fine detail and being a little extra extra, grab a mini rosemary tree for your next party. Adorn with mini battery-operated lights, dried bay leaves, star anise, and dehydrated citrus wheels. Then, fill the tree with boozy ornaments! Grab some leak-proof plastic spheres and fill them with your favorite spirit-forward cocktails, like Old Fashioneds or Negronis. The pièce de resistance!? Guests can pluck a bulb, pour it over ice, then help themselves to any of your decorations—bay leaves, star anise, citrus, and even the rosemary branches. Have matches nearby so they can smoke those goodies before dropping them into their drink!
#4 Batch ‘Em: This is the key to a happy holiday party for everybody. Find cocktails that can be batched ahead of time so you aren’t mixing and shaking for each guest. We usually estimate two cocktails per person, but read the room—if you have more conservative drinkers, serve them minis! Note: the most excellent batching involves a precise amount of dilution. Ideally, find a recipe for which the creator gives direction for adding a bit of water to dilute. (FOOD LA LA Cooking Club members will find batched cocktails with dilution specifics in their dashboards!)
#5 Try Something New: The holidays are a time to dazzle! Try flavors or a unique technique that draw you from your comfort zone. (Just, as we’ve learned a few times ourselves, don’t experiment on a crowd! Always test first!). I’m currently into clarified milk punches, and at FOOD LA LA, we call it Milk Drunk. The recipe is made by adding milk to an acidic batched cocktail (think fresh grapefruit, lemon, orange bitters, and tequila) to curdle the milk, then let it rest. The cocktail is then strained, slowly dripping through a sieve, leaving you with a fun and fancy clear batched libation that’s shelf stable for two months, and has a wonderful silky-smooth texture. Intrigued?! Tune into our Cooking Club December 16th as we go over a holiday Milk Drunk Recipe! Joyeux Noël!
Vote for Jen!
Click here to vote for Jen as she competes as the bartender with the brightest personality, most loyal customer base, and who, of course, makes the best drinks! With each vote, she sprints toward a chance to be featured on the cover of Bartender Magazine as the 2023 Bar Boss (and win $10k that she’d like to put toward writing her own cocktail book!)
Voting closes December 14th @ 7 PM PT!