Holiday Pear Martini

Just like all of you who are hosting holidays parties or just want to drink festively, I’ve been on the hunt for fantastic holiday cocktails recently. See the R+D Reindeer. The R+D Reindeer sold out in a few hours. We sold very drop of our cranberry citrus infused vodka. People were asking for seconds and thirds. It was a huge success.

Then a couple of days later I found this recipe for a Pear Cilantro Margarita and I got inspired.

Pears are a very wintery, fruity, semi-sweet but not-to-heavy flavor. If you don’t want a heavy, creamy, egg-noggy, dark liquor drink but you want to keep it festive and fun, Pear is a great way to go.

So instead of the store bought Pear Nectar that the Margarita recipe calls for, I decided to go all homemade on this one.

I found this recipe for Pear Nectar and decided to put my own little spin on it. My version?

Vanilla Bean and Bartlett Pear Nectar:

6 Bartlett Pears – pealed, cored, sliced

2 cups water

1 vanilla bean, split open

1/2 cup sugar

2 lemons, juiced

– Peal, core and slice your pears. Put the slices in a food processor with one cup of water and break them down until you have a smooth texture.

– Put the pear sauce into a saucepan with the rest of the water and the vanilla bean. Slowly bring the mixture to a simmer.

– Let it simmer for about ten minutes.

– Strain the mixture well into a bowl. Press the pulp to get all the liquid out.

(I added some of the pulp back in at this point because I wanted my martinis to have a little body to them. Do this. It’s delicious and it looks better.)

– Put the strained liquid back into your saucepan and add the sugar and lemon juice. Re-add the vanilla bean for additional vanilla flavor.

– Bring the mixture back up to a simmer and keep it there for another ten minutes to allow the liquid to thicken up.

– Take out the vanilla bean and let the mixture cool. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Since this is completely non-alcoholic, the nectar can be used in all kinds of things. (Yay for Brad getting to enjoy some of my creations!!) Use it in baking, drizzle it over vanilla ice cream (Dad, I thought of you for this one), add a bit to soda water for a fruity, fizzy drink… Use your imagination.

But this time I was using the nectar strictly for booze.

My attempt at the Pear Margarita didn’t turn out as Pear-y as I’d like for the little batch of nectar that I’d made, so I mixed things up and made a SUPER simple martini.

Need an easy but impressive holiday cocktail? Try this.

The Vanilla Bean Bartlett Pear Martini

2.5 oz Vodka

1.5 oz Vanilla Bean Bartlett Pear Nectar

– Put vodka and nectar into a shaker over ice.

– Shake it up. Strain into a martini glass.

– Drink. But Drink CAREFULLY. These are sneaky-potent.

That’s it.

I garnished mine with a slice of Bartlett Pear. There are vanilla specks floating around in it. There are little pieces of pear pulp in it. It is sweet and fruity, but not that gross, girly drink, SUPER sweet and fruity. This is like biting into a ripe pear. Drizzled with vanilla. And vodka. Maybe just drizzled with vanilla vodka…

Yum.

Now I’m drinking one at 1:30PM because I forgot to take pictures of it on Mixology Monday because we sold out of them so quickly. And I can’t let my photo shoot model go un-drunk. That’s just cruelty.