Cocktails to Make Using the Kids’ Drinks in Your Fridge
Have a fridge full of Capri Sun, chocolate milk, and Pedialyte? You can still make some quality mixed drinks.
While there’s nothing wrong with ending your day with a beer, a stiff pour of bourbon, or a few fingers of tequila with a snapped lime, sometimes the mood calls for a mixed drink — something mellow and easy drinking. But, more often than not, a parent’s fridge is stocked with kids’ drinks (chocolate milk, Pedialyte, apple juice) instead of classic cocktail mixers (pineapple juice, tonic, club soda). That’s why we reached out to Spanky Van Dyke, the fantastically named head bartender of The Flower Shop in Manhattan. He offered up a few concoctions to make with classic kids beverages so that, even when you’re staring at a fridge full of Capri Sun, chocolate milk, and Pedialyte, you can still create a smooth sipper that takes the edge off.
Chocolate Milk
Wikimedia Commons
What to Make: A Chocolate Bobsled
Ingredients:
1.5 oz. Vodka 3 oz. chocolate milk
Directions: Serve over rocks in a tumbler. Add a crushed cookie rim if you desire.
Apple Juice
What to Make: Apple Juice “Jack Rose”
Ingredients:
2 oz. whiskey 1.5 oz. apple juice .5 oz. lime or lemon juice .25 oz. grenadine or simple syrup.
Instructions: Shake and strain into a cocktail glass
Capri Sun
What to Make: Capri Sun Calypso
Ingredients:
1 oz. light rum 1 oz. dark rum 2 oz. capri sun splash lemon or lime juice
Directions:
Shake and strain into collins glass filled with ice. Finish with grated nutmeg
Sunny Delight
What to Make: A Sunny D. Sunrise
Ingredients:
1.5 oz. tequila 3 oz. Sunny Delight Dash Peychaud’s Bitters or .25 oz grenadine
Instructions
Pour ingredients into any glass filled with ice, top with either dash of bitters or the grenadine
Juicy Juice
What to Make: Gin & Juicy
Ingredients:
1.5 oz. gin 3 oz. Juicy Juice
Instructions:
Pour over ice. Consume.
Pedialyte
What to Make: New Jersey Iced Tea
Ingredients
1 oz. light rum
1 oz. vodka 1 oz. gin 1 oz. white tequila 3 oz. Pedialyte (preferably grape flavored) .25 oz. lemon juice
Instructions:
Add all ingredients except Pedialyte to a shaker and shake vigorously. Pour into a pint glass filled with ice and Pedialyte. Garnish with lemon wheel.
