In the Land of Cocktails

Greetings From Peepster, er… Easter Island

Posted by on April 10th, 2009

Let’s cut to the chase.  Easter is the best hol­i­day ever and here’s why:  It’s all about the  choco­late eggs, marsh­mal­low bun­nies and warmer weather.  Unlike Christ­mas, there is noth­ing even remotely stress­ful about Easter – no gifts to buy, not really any­thing you have to dec­o­rate besides eggs…and Paas has that cov­ered.  Vine­gar, water, color tablet, fizz, dunk.  Easy-peasy.  Easter is the calendar’s way of let­ting us know we’re past the angst of the emo­tional hol­i­days and it’s all good times (holiday-wise) from here to Thanks­giv­ing.  Fewer clothes shall soon be (not) worn and luaus are in our near future.

My friends think I’m kind of silly for mak­ing such a fuss over an oth­er­wise low-key and fairly ignor­able hol­i­day like Easter, but they still show up for Easter brunch because 1)  I’m a good cook, and 2)  they’re curi­ous as to what ridicu­lous cen­ter­piece I’ll come up with this year.  I’ve done the sac­ri­le­gious, like tying a choco­late bunny to a choco­late cross.  I’ve dumped many pounds of drug­store Easter candy into a giant trough-like plat­ter and handed out grab bags.  But being the Tiki girl that I am, I usu­ally find some way to infuse my love of Pop-Polynesia into Easter.   (Well, into every hol­i­day, given the chance.)  Last year’s cen­ter­piece incor­po­rated my col­lec­tion of Moai-style Tiki mugs, which I crammed full of assorted-colored Peeps.  I enti­tled this fine ode to spring­time, “Greet­ings from Peep­ster Island.”

But this is a blogsite about cock­tails so let’s get to it.  I believe that cock­tails can and should be themed for every occa­sion.  And what could pos­si­bly scream Easter louder than a cock­tail made with Peeps?  This is the third rea­son friends show up at my place for Easter – The Peeptini.

I know what you’re think­ing.  Gross.  Well… fine.  Don’t eat the Peep if you don’t like it.  But this cock­tail has a sweet fla­vor com­bi­na­tion of springy fla­vors and, Peep gar­nish aside, is a lovely drink.

What are the fla­vors of spring­time?  No, not lamb.  A lamb-flavored cock­tail WOULD be gross!  Straw­ber­ries, lemons, orange blos­soms, maybe a lit­tle pinap­ple?  Oh!  Oh!  What about pas­sion fruit?  Here’s where you can bring in the reli­gious part of Easter!  “The ‘Pas­sion’ Fruit of Christ!

Start with good vanilla vodka.  I pre­fer Swedish over Russ­ian for the spring.  It just seems hap­pier to me.  Now, depend­ing on what color Peep you chose as your gar­nish, shake up equal parts of the appro­pri­ate color juice.  If you dec­o­rate with a tra­di­tional yel­low chick Peep, use pineap­ple, pas­sion fruit and lemon juices.  If you pre­fer the pink bunny Peep, then go with straw­berry juice, a drop or two of orange flower water and a squeeze of lemon.  (The juice from defrosted straw­ber­ries works really well, and you can add a bit of sim­ple syrup to it to sweeten it up, if you want.  Or, blend fresh straw­ber­ries with a lit­tle sugar and water.)

You can buy col­ored sugar at cake dec­o­rat­ing stores and also Williams Sonoma.  Rim your mar­tini glass in the color sugar that matches your Peep choice.  Add your Peep gar­nish and serve your slack-jawed friends.  Sure, they’ll make stu­pid com­ments, but I’ll bet you they serve this to their friends next year.

If you don’t eat the Peep gar­nish au nat­ural, stick it in the microwave and watch it expand to 15 times its size.  This makes for fine post-brunch enter­tain­ment.  Or, my favorite Peep con­sum­able: toast a Peep over an open flame.  The sugar-coating  caramelizes while the inside melts, thus cre­at­ing a “Peep brulee” kind of thing.  Wash it all down with a frosty mug of insulin and have your­self a Happy Peep­ster… Easter!

Peep­tini (for Clas­sic Yel­low Chick gar­nish)

First, rim your mar­tini glass with the match­ing Peep-colored sugar.  Take your match­ing Peep and make a cut on the bot­tom so that it will adhere well to the rim of the glass.
Then take…

1 oz vanilla vodka
1 oz pineap­ple juice
1 oz pas­sion fruit juice
1 tbsp. Limon­cello liquor or squeeze of fresh lemon

Pour all of this over ice in your shaker and work your arm mus­cle.
Pour it into your wait­ing mar­tini glass and gar­nish the edge with the Peep.

If you are dec­o­rat­ing with a pink Peep (a pink bunny, per­haps?!), you can make an alternate-version Peep­tini by sub­sti­tut­ing the pineap­ple and pas­sion juices for straw­berry juice.  I also like adding three drops of culi­nary orange flower water (hard to find, but Middle-Eastern food stores often carry it) to the straw­berry ver­sion, for a flow­ery note in the drink.

Kari Hendler is a tele­vi­sion script super­vi­sor, pho­tog­ra­pher and reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Tiki Mag­a­zine (“The best mag­a­zine in the world!” accord­ing to Kari).