This week we dived into the drinks cabinet to try find a bottle that was nearly finished to create our cocktail of the week. It is tough all this cocktail drinking! It is however, quite fun learning about cocktails and we will continue with the hardship of creating and sampling drinks from our random collection of spirits for you. Who knows, we might actually get good at this. In the drinks cabinet we found a bottle of Absolut Raspberry Vodka that was nearly finished. We did little bit of research to see if there was anything we could use it for and we came across the Raspberry Collins. This drink comes from the ‘Collins’ cocktail family and there appears to be many relations in this family. We will have to try these in the future.

For this weeks cocktail, you will need:

• 1 measure of simple syrup
• 1/2 measure of fresh lemon juice
• 2 measures raspberry vodka
• soda water
• raspberries

Firstly, if you have not made a syrup before it really is simple. To make ours, we add 300 grams of sugar 60 ml of water, place it over heat and stir until it is a clear liquid. As it cools it will come a thick liquid.

To prepare the drink, start by adding some ice to a tall glass, add the syrup, lemon juice and vodka to the glass and stir well to mix them together. Fill the rest of the glass with soda water and garnish with a few raspberries. That’s it, you now have a Raspberry Collins.

The drink is refreshing and very easy to make. You can make this in a jug quite easily by multiplying the ingredients for number of people you are making it for. Perfect for an evening of drinks in the garden with friends. It will certainly be on our repertoire of cocktails in future.