Along with the ornament shots on the indoor breakfast table, I had a bar set up outside on the patio. Out of the photo is an ice chest filled with beer and flavored sparkling waters.

To the left, you can see a large basket tub filled with sparkling wine, non-alcoholic sparkling beverages, and wine. I love to add greens to the tub., such an easy and festive touch to every winter party.

A large glass dispenser filled with water, infused with lemon and cucumber slices. Making water available this way is not only more visually pleasing but reduces plastic.

We’re about one-third of the way through with the appetizer recipes, so how about a cute beverage idea for your next holiday gathering?

By far the most popular part of the annual party was this setup of desserts and shots. Let’s zoom in…

The Lighted Christmas trees with Ornament Shots were the bomb! I had purchased the round ornament shot glasses last year in the Target Dollar Spot but had yet to use them. Then Marissa sent me the TikTok idea of hanging them on these simple lighted trees. It’s a winner!

I’ve linked the trees and shot ornaments below. As for the shots themselves, do whatever you’d like. The most popular at our party was the Rum Chata & Fireball shot, which tastes like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. So good! I also made Bailey’s Irish Cream shots, Cranberry-Tequila shots, and Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey shots.

I have so many margarita recipes on this blog. Margarita cocktails and margarita desserts, but I’ve yet to post the basic classic margarita recipe. You’ll find the full list of all the previous recipes at the bottom of the post. Be prepared, there are many!

I made the classic last night for Cinco de Mayo, sometimes you forget how great simple can be.

Seriously, why am I not posting a cocktail recipe every Friday?!? While we’re all staying home, classic cocktails with new names, like the Quarentini are popping up all over the place.

This cocktail is my spin on the classic Zombie, tweaked and swirled to become a Zoombie. If you’re not on the phone with friends and family in FaceTime, you’re on your computer with friends and family in Zoom. Zoom Happy Hours have been the thing to do for weeks now. So please feel free to forward this recipe to your friends so that y’all can mix up a batch in your own kitchens and enjoy it together.

I enjoyed the Zoombie earlier this week with two dear friends who came by for a much-needed Social Distancing Happy Hour. By the way, the appetizer you see in the photos above is Zucchini Crostini. It is always a hit!

Greetings from Les Petites Gourmettes’ Austin correspondent, Marissa, coming in today with a super simple gin/Kombucha/Aperol quarantine cocktail recipe. Austin has been similar to, I think, most other places as we all shelter in place and social distance. Luckily, Jeff and I can both work from home, so we work during the week and then take walks and bike rides around our neighborhood, do YouTube yoga videos, have Zoom dates with friends and family, watch movies, play games, and drink cocktails, and cook.

I have been cooking a ton while we shelter in place, and trying lots of great new recipes, but I am still too embarrassed to share my final products, which are often yummy, but usually not pretty. Maybe someday! In the meantime, we’ll focus on the bar cart…

For this cocktail, I used this recipe, but halved it.

Kombucha-Aperol Quarantine Cocktail

• 1 cup gin
• 3/4 cup Aperol
• 1/2 of a 16-ounce bottle chilled ginger kombucha
• Club soda
• 1 tangerine

My signature cocktail for Easter brunch came together at the last minute. I had a dozen grapefruits that had been sitting on my counter for a week or more when I noticed that they were getting soft on the Thursday before Easter. I juiced them out and put the juice in the fridge, knowing that I’d somehow use it for an Easter cocktail.

I had forgotten I had the juice until about an hour before brunch began. So I searched the web for a grapefruit juice cocktail recipe. One of the first I saw was called a Danny Ocean. George Clooney? Ocean’s Eleven? Count me in!

The recipe called for a specific brand of tequila, Casamigos. I didn’t care about that, I knew I had a big bottle of Costco’s Kirkland brand of tequila, so I was good to go. The original recipe for the Danny Ocean called for grapefruit juice, lemon juice, agave nectar, maraschino liqueur, and Reposado tequila. I only had Añejo and Blanco tequilas, this would have to do.

Blanco is the lightest of the three in color (clear) and flavor. Reposado is a golden honey color that has aged longer and is richer and more complex than Blanco. Añejo is a rich caramel color, aged even longer, and is the most complex of the three. I decided to go with the Blanco. I grabbed the smaller of the two bottles I had, put it on the kitchen counter, and low and behold it was the Casamigos brand! Casamigos is Rande Gerber (Cindy Crawford’s husband) and George Clooney’s tequila. I had no idea I had a bottle of it. I know that I didn’t buy it so it must have been a hostess gift. Thank you, friend, whoever you are.

Since I wasn’t using the richer Reposado tequila, I decided to use all grapefruit juice and omit the lemon juice. I switched the sweeter agave nectar out and used simple syrup instead. And since I didn’t even know there was such a thing as maraschino liqueur, I used the syrup from amarena cherries.

If you’ve never had an amarena cherry, you must order a jar as soon as possible. You will never eat a maraschino cherry again… well maybe in a Shirley Temple, but that is all they are good for! Amarena cherries are a dark wild cherry from Italy and the syrup they are packed in is divine, drizzle it over ice cream and thank me later. Plus they come in the most beautiful little decorative jars.

Trader Joe’s sold them for a while, although I don’t think they are on the shelves now. You can find them HERE.

Since I changed just about every aspect of the recipe for the original Danny Ocean cocktail, I’ve named my cocktail “The George” Enjoy!

My son, Connor, came over yesterday afternoon for a Virtual Happy Hour with my daughter and son-in-law, Marissa and Jeff, who live in Austin, Texas.

We used Zoom to connect online and then went to JackboxGames and played two different games from that site, Drawful, and Fibbage. We had a blast and we are going to “gather” again next week.

Marissa and Jeff had leftover pasta for dinner. I made a Harmony Board to share with Connor. And once he arrived, we made my version of our favorite drink, a Frozen G & T, from an Austin restaurant we love, Loro.

Most people don’t know that the Paloma, not the Margarita, is Mexico’s most beloved cocktail. 

A classic Paloma uses grapefruit juice and tequila. Since I had a bowl full of blood oranges from my tree that wasn’t getting any better with age, if you know what I mean, I decided to use the blood orange juice in place of the grapefruit juice in the classic Paloma. I also infused fresh thyme in simple syrup and lemon juice I had leftover from this cocktail. Oh, and they call them blood oranges for nothing. After I finished cutting and squeezing all my oranges, it looked like a bloody scene on my cutting board!

If you want to make this in the near future, Trader Joe’s has bags of blood oranges right now. When fresh blood oranges aren’t in season, TJ’s also sells Villa Italia Blood Orange Soda and Grapefruit Soda. Using these flavored sodas is a great shortcut in place of the fresh juice.

We’ve been celebrating my mother-in-law, Patricia Hopkins, and her upcoming 92nd birthday all weekend long. She, along with her oldest son, my brother-in-law, Roger, and his daughter, my niece, Megan, flew in on Thursday. Mom’s birthday isn’t until the 13th, but this was the weekend that worked best for everyone’s schedule. Marissa is also in town, making it doubly special.

On Saturday afternoon, Megan was craving an espresso martini. She’d asked my nephew, Brandon, to make one for her a while back in Chicago and was disappointed when he didn’t create it for her. Brandon fancies himself as quite the mixologist, rightfully so. You may remember one of his creations that I just had to reproduce when I returned home from a trip to the windy city.

Anyhow, after I put together the makings for the espresso martini, Megan and Marissa felt the need to taunt Brandon on Instagram.

I put together a trio of Harmony Boards for our appetizers last night. I found the cute little pumpkin-shaped boards at Michael’s a couple of weeks ago. They were on clearance for 70% off!

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I have a thing for cucumber in cocktails, it’s so bright and refreshing. My all-time favorite is the Cucumber Martini.

What makes this drink different is the addition of mint simple syrup and the infusion of cucumber into the gin instead of muddling.

This is the second of two signature cocktails we served at the Harmony Boards launch party.

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