Last time my 13-year-old friend Isabella and I went out for dinner she ordered a Shirley Temple. I don’t know why it surprised me: after all, we were two girls having a night on the town, so why not live it up?
Isabella is one smart cookie. It’s not just that she found a way to order a drink with a shiny, sweet maraschino cherry on top, but she got someone to make a drink just for her. Bartenders do this all the time for adults who want alcoholic mixed drinks; so why should those who can’t or don’t want alcohol be shy?
Just to keep those bartenders on their toes, I often ask them to mix me up something interesting without any alcohol. The drinks were so good I got the urge to try my own hand, and I discovered it’s even more fun to mix up my own “mocktails” at home.
Armed with an array of fruit juices, lemons, limes and bubbly waters, I discovered a wonderful thing: It’s hard to make a bad drink with fruit juices. In fact, I couldn’t come up with even a single gross-out combination.
The only problem is deciding where to start. The possibilities are endless: Check the produce section to see what’s in season, and look in the frozen food aisle for frozen fruits (these are especially great for making smoothies.) Look for Goya’s tropical fruit nectars (especially guanabana, as delicious as it is fun to say) wherever they put the Mexican foods.
You can even use canned fruit – just look for the ones in light syrup instead of heavy syrup, which tastes nasty in a drink. Check out the juice aisle, too, but be careful: a lot of “juices” have more water and sugar in them than fruit juice. Get 100 percent fruit juice for best results.
Then pick up some club soda or seltzer water. (Forget soda pop – it’s so sweet that it makes the drink taste more like candy than anything you really want to drink with dinner.)
When you get home, you’ll be ready to start experimenting yourself. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:
1. Start with small amounts of juice: it’s easier to add more juice than it is to take it out! A good ratio to start with is 1/4 cup of one juice, 1/4 cup of another juice, and 1/2 cup of club soda.
2. A squeeze of lemon is always a good way to freshen up a combination that just isn’t doing it for you. To get the most juice out of a lemon, roll it on the counter, pressing down hard on it, to soften it up, then cut it in half and squeeze the juice out through a strainer into a glass or small measuring cup.
3. If you use whole fruits, you’ll need to whir them up in a blender, so get an adult to help you, and always add a little bit of liquid – it will help purée them faster and smoother.
4. If you like thick drinks, chop a banana up and freeze it. When it’s frozen, you can put them in a blender with other fruits and juices to make a drink as thick as a milkshake.
5. Accessorize! Drop small fruits into transparent drinks. Top with cherries. Cut fruit into all sorts of shapes to stick on the rim of the glass, or find some skewers, stick some grapes, strawberries, cherries, whatever, and use it as a swizzle stick.
Tara Q. Thomas is managing editor of Wine & Spirits magazine, and author of the “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine Basics.” She can be reached at dp@taraqthomas.com.
Drink recipes Just For Kids
Teen Vogue
A variation on the Cosmopolitan using ultra-hip, vitamin-packed pomegranate juice instead of fuddy-duddy cranberry, this tangy drink will wake up your taste buds. By Tara Q. Thomas, makes 1.
Ingredients
1/4 cup pomegranate juice
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup club soda
1 squeeze of lime
Directions
Mix first 3 ingredients together in a glass. Cut the lime in half. Squeeze half into the glass (use just enough to make it taste good; you don’t have to use the whole thing). Slice a piece of lime off the other half and make a cut from the middle of the lime through the rind. Slide this onto the side of the glass and serve.
Mandarin Madness
If you like bubble tea, with its round balls of tapioca, you’ll love this drink, which is filled with the tiny juice sacs of mandarin oranges. By Tara Q. Thomas, makes 2.
Ingredients
1 can mandarin oranges in light syrup (11 ounces)
1 tablespoon pineapple juice
1/2 teaspoon lime juice
Blueberries
Green grapes
Swizzle sticks
Directions
Drain mandarin oranges, reserving liquid. Put orange sections in a blender and blend for just a few seconds (unless you don’t like pulp, in which case just blenderize until smooth). Pour into a measuring cup and mix in pineapple and lime juice.
Adjust drink to your taste, adding a little reserved syrup from mandarin oranges if you like. Pour drink into 2 glasses. Spear blueberries and grapes on swizzle sticks, alternating colors, and add to drink.
Blue Banana Bliss
This is a terrific breakfast drink with cereal or waffles, and a good pick-me-up after school. By Tara Q. Thomas, makes 1.
Ingredients
1 banana
1/2 cup blueberries
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup vanilla yogurt
Directions
A day ahead, peel a banana and cut it into chunks. Place chunks on a plate and put them in the freezer.
When banana chunks are frozen, get an adult to get out the blender. Put banana chunks into blender and add the blueberries and the orange juice. Blend until smooth. Pour into a tall glass and stir in the vanilla yogurt – you can make swirls if you want. Garnish with a few blueberries on top. Drink up.
The Real Shirley Temple
Some people say this is the original recipe made for Shirley Temple, who became a movie star in the 1930s at age 5. Even if it’s not, it’s better than the usual 7-Up tinted with grenadine. This has more flavor and looks like a sunset in a glass. By Tara Q. Thomas, makes 1.
Ingredients
1/2 cup ginger ale
1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
1 splash grenadine
1 maraschino cherry
Directions
Fill a small glass with ice. Pour the ginger ale into it. Then pour the orange juice in. Do not stir. Then pour the grenadine in and watch while it sinks to the bottom of the glass. Garnish with cherry.
Peach Blossom
Here’s an ageless version of the Bellini, an over-21 combination of white peach juice and sparkling wine. By Tara Q. Thomas, makes 1.
Ingredients
1/2 cup peach nectar
1/2 cup club soda
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Directions
Combine peach nectar, club soda and lemon juice in a measuring cup and whisk together until frothy. Pour into a tall, thin glass.
William and Alex Special
William, 8, and Alex Schor, 5, of Denver entered this recipe in The Post’s Kids Cooking Contest: “We made this recipe at a restaurant buffet because our parents were talking too much and we were bored.”
Ingredients
2 cups orange juice
1 cup cranberry juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup grape juice
Slice of honeydew melon dropped in for decoration
Directions
Mix it together and you have a William and Alex Special.
