drink recipes

No, it’s not some kind of adult playground game. It’s a cocktail! I stumbled upon this gem while poking around on my favorite recipe site – Allrecipes.com.

If you Google “Hop Skip and Go Naked recipe” you will most likely find a bunch of recipes that involve a combination of beer, vodka and lemonade (ew?). You might also find a cookie recipe or two. Cookies are good, but this drink is better!

Simple ingredients – cherry vodka, Triple Sec, cranberry juice and grenadine. Tastes just like Hawaiian Punch.

Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red (Photo credit: Like_the_Grand_Canyon)

It is SO good that it’s quite easy to knock back a few, kind of forgetting the vodka part, until suddenly… you’re drunk! Thus, I have renamed this drink Hawaiian Punch Drunk. It’s a much more suitable moniker, and removes any connections to that hillbilly beer/lemonade concoction. Whatever you call it though, you should definitely try it – especially if you live in my neck of the woods where it’s going to be 80 degrees tomorrow!

A. Being a child of the 80’s I have a special place in my heart for hair bands, jelly shoes, and all things neon.

B. I love theme parties.

A + B = C (aka Totally Awesome 80’s Party!!)

A few years ago I decided to throw an 80’s themed party. I spent hours surfing the internet for ideas for decorations, food, drinks and the perfectly tacky 80’s outfit. One of the food ideas I came across would become my first attempt at making decorated sugar cookie cutouts – Pac-Man Cookies!!

The cookies themselves were simple enough to make. I needed three mini cookie cutters – tulip, a circle and a heart. Flip the tulip upside down and you have a ghost (or to be more specific, a Pinky, Blinky, Inky or Clyde). The circle makes the Pac-Man, and the pointy end of the heart can be used to cut a wedge out for Pac-Man’s mouth. They baked up perfectly!

Next step was to ice the cookies. This ended up being a little messy (remember, I said this was my FIRST attempt!!). The icing recipe I ended up using was more like a glaze and my application method involved a spoon, a toothpick and some foul language. Despite the cursing and the dripping icing, my finished product was pretty cute and VERY tasty.

: (a mini chocolate chip placed in a small dot of white icing from a tube makes the eyeballs)

The cookies were a hit, as were the drinks! I made a pitcher of Electric Smurf and a pitcher of Slimer’s Ecto Cooler, both which fit my 80’s theme in name AND color. Just in case that wasn’t enough sugar I also had a table filled with candy from my childhood. That’s right people, I found RAZZLES!!

I set up a playlist of all the greatest hits of the 80’s, covered my walls with 80’s posters and my couches with He-Man sheets, scrounged up an Alf hand puppet, and also had an 80’s game table!

I put a ton of work into my 80’s theme party and for the most part it was in fact, Totally Awesome! One note of caution – it seems that when you throw a party that reminds people of their childhood/teenage years there is a greatly increased likelihood of people actually acting like children. That is a story for a whole different blog though… : )

Oh, and that perfectly tacky 80’s outfit??