Tonight’s cocktail is a classic – one of the six basic drinks listed in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by David Embury. The daiquiri is simple yet elegant, potent yet enjoyable, and mostly overlooked (at least in my circles). Let’s fix that, shall we?  The base daiquiri is just white rum, lime juice, and simple syrup. The International Bartenders Association’s recipe for this drink is 9 parts white rum, 5 parts lime juice, and 3 parts simple syrup. Yes, you read that correctly… 9 parts of white rum. There is your potency right there! Of course, I couldn’t resist tweaking the recipe slightly… again with my adding a slight bit of lemon to temper the lime’s sourness. Of course, additional tweaks are to swap out all or part of the lime with other fruits like strawberries, bananas, blueberries, etc. Also, this version is not the frozen slushy style, but you could put all the ingredients into a blender and create that style if you desire. Personally, I enjoy the clean flavors of the basic recipe (with my tweak of course) served strained into a martini glass. If I was to add anything, I might add a slight amount of orange blossom water to twist the citrus slightly and add a wonderful fragrance to this cocktail. Maybe I’ll try that on my second one… if I get to a second one tonight!

Chill a martini glass in the freezer or with ice. Juice 2 limes and 1/2 lemon. Add cracked ice to a shaker. Add the rum, lime/lemon juice and simple syrup to the shaker. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds or more until a frost forms on the outside.

Strain into chilled martini glass.

Enjoy!

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