Salted Caramel Chocalatini | A Christmas Cocktail*

Aldi recently invited me to take part in their #aldifavouritethings Christmas Cocktail challenge to create a drink fit for the festive season. I arrived home one day to find that they had very generously sent me over 4 different spirits from their collection including Tamova Vodka*, so hot off the heels of mixing up some very scientific cocktails in London last week (post here), I found myself experimenting with some of my own ‘mixology’ at home!

As calories don’t count on Christmas Day (FACT!) I eat lots of selection box sweeties. The chocolate caramels are my favourites so with that in mind I’ve created a super indulgent, dessert style cocktail for after Christmas Dinner.  

Be warned – it’s pretty potent – the sort that will leave you snoozing on the sofa afterwards! (This was proven on Sunday afternoon, which explains my lack of a blog post on Monday – whoops!)

As an added bonus the leftover caramel vodka would make a lovely homemade gift for someone, just pour it into a nice bottle and add a little ‘Drink Me’ gift tag!

A couple of points to mention: I don’t have proper cocktail measures so I used shot glasses. I also don’t own a cocktail shaker but found that using a thermal flask worked just fine and the slotted lid acted perfectly as my strainer (just remember not to shake too vigorously!)

Part 1: Salted Caramel Vodka

This is quite simply the easiest thing in the world to make. Just make it up 2 or 3 days in advance for the best results!

Ingredients

1/2 Bottle Vodka
16 Werther’s Original
Salt

Directions

Fill an airtight container with the vodka, then drop in the Werthers Originals – you could use other hard candies if you want a different flavour.

Stir the mixture, seal the container and leave it overnight.
In the morning stir the mixture again and the repeat for 1 to 2 more days until the caramel is completely dissolved into the vodka.

 Give it another really good stir and add a pinch of salt.

Finally, sieve the vodka into your container of choice.

Part 2: Salted Caramel Chocolatini

Ingredients

3 shot glasses Caramel Vodka
2 shot glasses of Irish Cream
1 shot glass chocolate sauce (plus extra for decoration)
4 scoops vanilla icecream
2 Werther’s Original (for decoration)

Directions

Pop your martini glasses in the freezer for 30 minutes to ‘frost’.
Crush the Werther’s Original to a fine dust.

Add the vodka, irish cream and chocolate sauce to a cocktail shaker with a big handful of ice cubes and shake for 30 seconds.

 

Strain the mixture into a blender and add the icecream.
Blend until smooth and frothy.
Take your cocktail glass out of the freezer and dip the rim in the caramel dust.

 

Pour the cocktail into the martini glass.
Finish with another squeeze of chocolate sauce and a sprinkle of the caramel dust. If you have some chocolate a few sprinkled shavings on top wouldn’t go amiss either…

Finally pop your feet up in front of the tree and raise a toast to another Very Merry Christmas!

Do you have a favourite Christmas Day cocktail? And can you think of a suitably Christmassy name for my concoction?