Tag Archives: cocktail

Several of my colleagues are in love with Hello Kitty.

In the 2 seconds it took to digest that sentence, you’ve surely thus realized that also means they’re in love with the color pink. So infatuated with both every shade of pink and every incarnation of Hello Kitty are they that the two are practically inseparable in my mind.

Thus when I came up with a drink so very vibrant and self-assured in its own pink-ness, I had to come up with some kind of title that properly honored these friends of mine.

The Bitter Kitty: A Campari Swizzle of Sorts

• 1.5 oz white rum (I used Mt. Gay)
• .75 oz lemon juice
• .5 oz falernum (I made my own, but look for Velvet Falernum)
• .5 oz Campari
• .25 oz lemoncello (I used Luxardo)
• Prepare as you would a swizzle, which is to say the ingredients should be added to a glass with crushed ice and stirred until the glass has acquired a frosty chill.
• Alternatively, if you’re not in the mood to crush ice, you can simply shake the ingredients and pour over a few large ice cubes.

I prepared this drink for the GU Detroit picnic this year, and over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few people ask for the recipe. So I figured it’d be worth posting here. (In fact, I’d actually already posted this recipe, but since that time, I’ve altered it a bit and greatly prefer the newest version.)

Mess with the preparation notes at your own risk. I use my own homemade falernum in this drink, which is heavily rum based, so that’s basically more than 2.5 ounces of hooch. Without that dilution from swizzling or shaking, this gets aggressively boozy. Of course, when properly diluted and chilled, it’s poundably quaffable, and you’ll be drunk as hell in no time. Not that such a state of being is a problem.

Enjoy!