Waterfall

Waterfall is a picturesque landscape in a cocktail. Tasty and easy, too. You won’t be apprehensive pouring this layered drink. Follow our lead. We’ve worked out all the kinks.

Your guests’ tastebuds will adore the fruity flavour combination while her clear and cloudy aqua blue layers are sweet eye candy.

Recipients: Guests who love sipping long, cold cocktails by the pool.

Type: Built in the glass

Foxy Brown

This is an odd combo. I can’t think of any other drink or food that combines orange and coffee. However, it just works, in a mature way. I will admit, I didn’t come up with it. This is my sister, Adele’s idea and we tried it.

At first, this tastes like none of the ingredients. Though, a calming earthiness overcomes. Then, you detect smoky coffee and musky orange oil, carried along by yeasty bubbles.

Recipients: Bubbly drinkers who need to catch a breath, rest and reflect. Maybe they need a reward for a job well done or making it to the end of a working week. We drink Foxy Brown quite a bit. Hehe!

Type: Made in the glass

Crazy Bull

The Crazy Bull is everything in a glass. It’s our Spanish cocktail that is rich in colour, texture, sweet, sour and punchy!

The Crazy Bull is named for Miguel Maestre, Australia’s ball of fire in the shape of a chef. His excitement is contagious and so is his drink. He is a favourite with mums because his recipes are doable and he reminds us of our sons.

The Crazy Bull is layered in red and yellow to resemble the Spanish flag. And includes that popular vanilla liqueur from Spain, Licor 43.

Recipients: Guests who love fun drinks and those who like to drink with their eyes, first.

Type: Made in the glass

Glorious

Glorious is how I imagine classic, tall 60s and 70s cocktails taste. The warmth of orange, burnt sugar and raisin are bittersweet layers in this long drink.

Glorious is named for my mum, Gloria. Her preferred tipple is scotch whisky. Cocktails she likes tend to be slow sippers with natural, deep, mellow tastes. Mum is not into garish colours and sugar rims, unless on holiday.

Recipients: Guests who like to sip their drinks for a while. Friends with maturity. Whisky lovers.

Type: Made in the glass

Guavanother Gimlet

Guavanother Gimlet is a drink we can (and do) drink a lot. She’s just sweet enough, refreshing and oh, so zestily aromatic.

The sweet tang of guava, snappy perfume of lime and floral sharpness of gin come together in a cocktail that has extremely wide appeal for all our testers and goes down very quickly.

Recipients: Everyone, honestly.

Type: Made in the glass

Bloody Michelle

Bloody Michelle dwells in a delicious no man’s land. She is more rounded and mellow than a michelada and less thickly rich than a classic bloody mary. Okay, her country is less like no man’s land and more like everyone’s paradise.

Recipients: Friends who are squeamish about bloody maries due to their variable intensity and viscosity.

Type: Made in the glass, interactive.

Mo McGrath

Here’s our most useful recipe, so far.

Mo McGrath is named for a friend who isn’t called Mo and stopped using McGrath the same night her cocktail was invented.*

Portable and easily found in bars, we’ve combined Mo’s ingredients at catered events, clubs, sporting grounds, picnics and hotel rooms. We’ve served her as a welcome drink and to the lingerers at the end of the night, to equal glee.

Recipients: Sparkling and still wine drinkers. Also, those who prefer to drink sparkling wine with a mixer.

Type: Made In Glass

I Love Loosey

This is our cherry flavoured homage to Lucille Ball. Lucy was the original cocktail mum who fudged her way through household and relationship management, paving the way for the rest of us to be true to our goofy natures. In life, Lucille Ball was the creative genius we have to be to pull off being a modern woman.

Loosey looks and tastes like a proper cocktail but she’s only 30ml of alcohol so you won’t get too loosey.

Recipients: Fruit fans. And those that like to sip their drinks slowly while looking suave.

Type: Made In Glass

Frangelina

Whether you admire her or think otherwise, you can’t deny Angelina Jolie is committed to her children. Her dedication and an opportunity to cornily combine her name with a hazelnut liqueur caused us to dedicate this cocktail to a standout mother.

It is so yum you won’t believe it. Then you’ll need another to make sure.

Recipients: Lovers of sweet aroma. Not for those prone to skulling drinks. Frangelina is deceptively strong.

Type: Shaken

Old Codger

This is our unsophisticated, easier drinking version of the popular, classic, finicky drink, Old Fashioned. It is so easy drinking you can use lower shelf all the way to underground bourbon.

Admittedly, this is not a beautiful looking drink. But it tastes great, drink after drink, even to people who don’t ordinarily drink bourbon, like us.

Recipients: People who need bourbon conversion that can handle their alcohol

Gin Genie

Magically, this has only 74 calories.* It is utterly drinkable and looks chic to boot. If you’ve made some New Year’s resolutions regarding healthy living, I can’t help you much. This contains gin.

Confession: Adele Bradshaw made us gin and tonic garnished with mint and cucumber. I loved the aroma so much I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I wanted it in a relaxed, sipping drink instead of searching for it within the mouth puckering shock of tonic. Here is the result of my non original idea, my current favourite mixed drink.

Recipients: People sitting by the water, successfully wearing white and the rest of us.

Type: Made In Glass

Citrus Spacek

This is intensely lemony as well as sweet. strong and sour.

Confession: Adele gave the punny name to a drink I made one night. A few days later when I wrote out the recipe, it turned out to be a caipiroska, made with mandarin vodka, which doesn’t deserve a name like Citrus Spacek. The only option was to come up with a drink sassy enough to fit the name. Here it is.

Recipients: Lemon lovers, friends with a sweet and sour tooth

Type: Made In Glass

Lazy Margarita

This isn’t a new recipe. It is a lazy method to get a margarita in your hand faster, using less implements. You can cull another step by using bottled juice instead of lemons but the aroma from bruised peel complements the citrus flavour of Cointreau or triple sec.

Recipients: Cool, fun, party people

Type: Made in glass

Ginger Legs

This is strong but extremely tasty. Before you know it you’ve had three and your legs are feeling ginger. Hehe!

I know bitters are not a common pantry ingredient but we tend to have a bottle in our house most of the time. You only use a few drops at a time so a bottle lasts for ages. And they are useful to deepen flavour in many drinks. It is an unusual ingredient worth buying.

Confession: This is a stronger version of a mixed drink, called Ginger Square, we had many times in our World Cup trip to South Africa in 2010. They use a ginger liqueur, called Oude Meester, that we can’t get in Australia, so we needed a work around for home.

Recipients: Ginger lovers, friends with a sore throat

Type: Mix In Glass