The Joan Crawford Cosmo Cocktail

I pressed the “publish” button for my book on Friday – eek!  I’ve been celebrating all weekend.  Here I am, cocktail in one hand, proof copy in the other.  Don’t I look pleased with myself?!

Well I AM pleased with myself.  It was a lot of work but I am very proud of it.  More details, ad infinitum, coming soon.  On sale Saturday after next – 8th November…  It is BIGGER than I was expecting, but I love it.

Mr R made me a congratulatory Joan card and furnished me with Champagne which we drank on Sunday morning in bed – DECADANCE!

Later on we decided to create a Crawford cocktail for the Joan Crawford Virtual Reality Dinner Party on the 8th – are you coming?  Everyone is invited! Wherever you are in the world, join us!  Recipes are on the Recipe of the Month page if you land here in November 2014 – if you visit that page sometime in the future, who knows what you will find?!

People have occasionally asked if I “make up” the film star recipes I write about here – most definitely NOT!  They are all recipes linked to the stars that appeared in fan magazines, promotional booklets and cookbooks.  I’ve written about this a bit more here….

BUT, I did make up a cocktail once, and that can be found here… The Louella Parsons Cocktail (although I may have to make it again.  To check the ratios you understand…)

and now I am making up another, for all my lovely readers who either:

a) would like a nice pre-Joan-Crawford-dinner-cocktail for their party on the 8th

or b) can’t be bothered to cook anything on the 8th but would like to join the party…

Just make one of these!

The Joan Crawford Cosmo

3 parts Smirnoff vodka*

2 parts Cranberry Juice (one of Joan’s nicknames was Cranberry)

1 part M&S Orange & Brandy  Liqueur (you could use Grand Marnier, Triple Sec or Cointreau if you can’t get your hands on this – and then you can then RENAME this cocktail and make it your own!)

Shake all of the above in a cocktail shaker with some ice then drain into lovely big glasses.  Serve with a cherry on a cocktail stick.

If you don’t have a cocktail shaker just mix it all together and pour it over lots of ice.  If you don’t have ice, have it warm.  Who cares?  It’s your cocktail!

I like cocktail recipes that do measures in “parts” because I have no idea what 5 oz of booze looks like…  When measuring “parts” I use my mad jigger thingy.

The small end for “relations”

and the large end for “friends”.  Ha ha, cheeky eh?

Must get some silver polish!

Actually for this one, I used the small end and that was enough for two nice cocktails I reckon.

* And why do I specify Smirnoff?  Because I found this note in one of my notebooks recently.  Who knows where I read this, but I found it worthy of writing down, naturally!

 

Enjoy your special tipple my lovelies – it’s sort of a Cosmopolitan without the lime juice (I didn’t have any….) You might have to try out a few before the 8th of course, just to make sure you like them…

If you think a Cosmo is a bit girlie for you, Mr R is creating a “Dr Phibes” cocktail for pre-dinner drinks on Halloween which I’ll write about here later.  We will be having Vincent Price Goulash – naturally!

If you’d like to see a film of me and my chum Nathalie making some of Vincent Price’s Goulash in a film made to promote the British Film Institute’s Gothic season, click here…  I am slightly freaked out to see that this has had 3,450 views of of today – that’s SPOOKY!  I can’t get over how many TEETH I seem to have…