Blushing Grapefruit Collins

Mar 16, 2016 in cocktails, drinks, party food, grapefruit, gin, oranges, epicurious. Read the original on: Food Fanatic

Sometimes I get the feeling that what we end up doing in life was planted in a random and completely unobtrusive way when we were younger. Iâ€™m not really surprised that I ended up as a recipe developer or a photographer, since I was surround by both in my home growing up.

What Iâ€™m really talking about is the eventual path to mixology. Anyone can make a cocktail,

grab some liquor, mixers, bitters and follow directions. Thereâ€™s a little more to mixing up new drinks though and I swear it all started by our weekly outings to the local diner. It sounds strange but bear with me for a moment.

In pretty much any diner that you went to on Long Island, every table was laid out with the exact same paper placemat - pictures of classic cocktails with the ingredients listed below on how to mix them all up.

I was a pretty well behaved kid when we went out to eat, my parents didnâ€™t need to bring toys to keep me entertained, and back in my youth we didnâ€™t have iPhones and every other gadget imaginable. I was lucky to have a gameboy!

Nope, what I did while I waited for breakfast or my burger to come was either color with the provided crayons or read that placemat. Do you know how often we went to the diner? A lot. I can picture that placemat right now and clearly I feel like it was a deep seated path that I would start mixing up all these cocktails one day for my job!

By the time I was old enough to have my first drink, I remember my dad handing me a Tom Collins to try, just like one of the classics on the placemat! I didnâ€™t like it much then, but it took time to appreciate the taste of gin.

These days, Iâ€™ll have one if itâ€™s offered but I certainly prefer to take the base recipe and shake things up a little bit. The lemon juice has been swapped for ruby red grapefruit juice while they are still in season, and I added just a splash of Campari for color and bitterness. In general I tend to go towards bitter over sweet with my drinks.

This blushing grapefruit Collins ends up wonderfully refreshing and easy to mix together after a long day at work. Frankly, I think the classic might have been replaced!

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Blushing Grapefruit Collins Recipe

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Ingredients

1/2 ounce simple syrup 2 ounces fresh ruby red grapefruit juice 2-3 dashes aromatic bitters 1 1/2 ounces gin 1/2 ounce campari club soda thyme and grapefruit slices, for garnish ice cubes

Directions

Add the simple syrup, grapefruit juice and bitters to a Collins glass and stir in the gin and Campari. Fill with ice and top with club soda. Garnish with a sprig of thyme and grapefruit slice before serving.

Read the original on: Food Fanatic