Mister Hugh's World of Randomness

hi,

Well, just like I promised, I did a little experimentation with cocktails on thursday night. Both the process and the results were interesting in many ways.

Continuing on the random theme, I decided to get several other people to each select one of the ingredients for me to work with. To make it more interesting, none of them knew what any of the other ingredients were when they chose theirs. So, thanks to Peggie, Madoka, Ben, Esme, and Stu, here were the ingredients I had to work with:

Raspberries,
Vanilla Ice Cream,
Champagne
Gin,
Blue Curacao (though I couldn't get it and had to settle for Blue Bols),


Noticing a distinct red and blue colour scheme with these ingredients, I decided to draw inspiration from my alter-ego (Spiderman - see the very first post in this blog), to create a two-tone, layered drink, with the raspberries pureed along with the ice-cream on top.

My success was mixed at first, as some of these photos may indicate.


Urrrgh!



Spiderman 3 emerges



Nice - but not red and blue


Eventually, though, I think I succeeded in creating a pretty good drink which had a pleasant and distinctive appearance, quite a good taste and a reasonable alcohol balance. Because of the inevitable failures on the messy road to success, the cocktail is called 'Spiderman 4'.



The Final Result - Spiderman 4


I will decline to publish the details of Spidermans 1, 2 and 3 - I think it's best for all concerned. The champagne was soon identified as a prime culprit for foamy disaster, and thus rejected. Also, I ran out of raspberries as certain people decided that the raspberry puree was quite edible on it's own, and ate it all. So I had to replace it with cranberry juice, and make the ice-cream layer the blue one, which worked better anyway in the end as the raspberry puree had been too pink for the Spiderman theme.

Without further ado, here's the recipe:

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SPIDERMAN 4

You will need:

1 measure London Dry Gin
1/4 pint of Cranberry Juice
2 measures Blue Bols
3 scoops Vanilla Ice-Cream


Mix the Cranberry Juice and Gin and pour into a highball glass.

Then mix the Ice-Cream (which should be just soft enough to scoop easily, but not melted) with the Blue Bols in a blender.

Slowly and carefully pour the ice-cream mixture into the glass, being sure that the two layers do not mix (this is tricky; tilting the glass will help).

You could add a raspberry for decoration (if your flatmates haven't scoffed them all).

Then serve, but before drinking see warnings below!

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Before drinking, make sure you have medical assitance on standby, and/or a well-drafted will. I make no guarantees as to the possible short or long term effects of such a wantonly constructed drink.

The only specific warning I will give is not to be fooled by the apparent sludginess of the top layer of the drink, and therefore tip it too fast while drinking; this may result in a hideous splattering of red and blue foam all over your face, hair and clothes, as well as the sofa. The person who was kind enough to discover this for me will remain nameless for the sake of dignity (but if she's reading this, she'd better make sure she's nice to me as I could change my mind about this at any time, and i've still got the photo ;-) . Also, thanks for the best laugh of the week).