Mixology with a minor

The youngest was pestering me to “make something” with her yesterday.

So we concocted some strawberry shortcake-infused vodka together.

I’m not sure that’s in the Mum of the Year handbook.

The youngest was initially resistant to making infused vodka until I pointed out she was currently sugar free and couldn’t eat baked goods anyway.

And then we merrily set about our mixology experiment.

I’d been marinating a few punnets of strawberries in 750ml of vodka all week. We drained them through a sieve then siphoned the fluid through a piece of stocking into a bottle to get the seeds out.

The resulting liquid was the most glorious rose colour – we were both very impressed with the hue. Then we made sugar syrup to mix through it with vanilla extract.

It seemed a waste to chuck the boozy strawberries away so we puréed and sieved them, then poured the mixture into ice cube moulds to spike summer champagne.

I took the infused vodka to my friend Suse’s house last night. We had a 50th birthday to attend and I figured it would make the perfect party starter.

We had it with sparkling wine. It tasted fan-bloody-tastic.