On the second day of Christmas, there were cocktails with homemade Sour Mix. Because of crowds at the mall, the fact that your kid told you he wanted the impossible-to-find Nintendo NES from Santa (I said “Santa doesn’t bring presents for grown-ups, and we both know that’s really for your daddy”,) and perhaps you (with the help of your husband and two friends) just harvested over 200 lemons from your backyard tree.
When you hear “sour mix,” you think of a Dayglo green liquid, right? Also known as Margarita mix, this overly sweet and sour concoction needs no place in your cocktail repertoire. If you have water, sugar, lemons and limes, you can whip up a batch of this yourself without all of those preservatives and ingredients we can’t pronounce.
Homemade gifts get a bad rap, (crocheted tea cozies come to mind) but why not tie a ribbon or a tag around a pretty bottle of this homemade mix with a recipe for a whiskey sour? During the holidays, I’m all about homemade edible gifts. Several years in a row, I made limoncello. One year it was cranberry liqueur. One year I made lemon-lavender sugar scrub. Every year I make homemade candies.
Sour mix is as easy one part simple syrup, one part lime juice, and one part lemon juice. I used Meyer lemon juice, as usual, because we finally harvested our lemons (with the help of friends Allison and Druhan) and we have over 200. So don’t get mad at me if Lemon Baby gets a little lemon happy.
A whiskey sour is the cocktail that comes to my mind, but you could label it “margarita mix” for your tequila-loving buddies. Include one of the following recipes:
Whiskey Sour
Makes one drink1.5 oz whiskey
4 oz sour mixShake and serve over ice. Garnish with an orange peel and a cherry.
Margarita
Makes one drink1.5 oz silver tequila
3 oz sour mixShake and serve over ice in a salt-rimmed glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.
DIY Sour Mix
A quick and easy way to rid yourself of that Day-Glo store-bought sour mix forever!
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1/2 cup lime juice
- 1/2 cup simple syrup equal parts water and sugar simmered until sugar is dissolved
Instructions
Instructions
-
Mix ingredients together and store in a clean, dry bottle in the fridge for up to two weeks.
