Eye of the Storm (Halloween Dark and Stormy Cocktail)

Our Halloween cocktail is a spooky twist on a dark and stormy, with rum, ginger beer, a squeeze of fresh lime and cherry juice and grenadine for that bright red color. These are perfect for your next costume party, and they're easy to make!

🍹 Why We Love This Recipe

• Classic flavors, seasonal twist: This recipe is a modified dark and stormy - one of our all-time favorite cocktails - that's been given a Halloween spin with cherry juice and grenadine for color, and a spooky eyeball ice cube for fun. What's not to like?
• Well-rounded flavor profile: Ginger beer and rum add spiciness, cherry and lime juice contribute a great tart flavor, and grenadine rounds everything out with a nice touch of sweetness.
• Ridiculously easy: Just pour everything into a cocktail shaker and shake it up, then top off with ginger beer. That's it. (Spooky eyeball ice cube and dry ice optional, but encouraged!)

🍶 Ingredients

Here's everything you need to make this spooky Halloween cocktail:

📋 Ingredient Notes

• Tart cherry juice: You can normally find this as concentrate, so be sure to dilute it according to package instructions or your cocktail will be incredibly sour. If you can't find tart cherry juice, you can also use regular cherry juice, cranberry juice or pomegranate juice.
• Grenadine: This is a pomegranate-based syrup. It's super sweet and contains zero alcohol. We mainly use this in the cocktail for its red color, but it also adds a touch of sweetness. It's an ingredient we always keep stocked in our bar cart – it's great for cocktail classics like a Shirley Temple, Tequila Sunrise or Hurricane.
• Ginger beer: Using a high quality ginger beer (like Goslings) will elevate the quality of your drink. Lower quality ginger beer can be super sweet and lacking in flavor. Some ginger beer contains alcohol, but we use nonalcoholic version. Either is fine for this recipe.
• Lime juice: freshly squeezed is always best in cocktails – it's way more tart and mush fresher tasting than the stuff that comes in a bottle.
• Rum: there are many different styles and variations of rum – each with a different flavor profile. For a delicious dark and stormy cocktail, we prefer dark rum, which is aged and has a much more robust flavor than white/clear rum.

🔪 Step-by-step Instructions

(1) Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Add rum, cherry juice, lime juice, and grenadine to the shaker and shake well.

(2) Pour into a glass filled with ice and top with ginger beer. Garnish with a lime wedge.

(Optional) Make eyeball ice cubes for your cocktail, using lychee and blueberries. You can find canned lychee in the Asian foods section of your grocery store.

Slice each lychee fruit in half, then place a blueberry in the opening of each lychee fruit, place in an ice cube tray, fill with water and freeze.

💭 Expert Tips and FAQs

• Dry ice: for extra spooky cocktails, you can add a small piece of dry ice for the smoky, bubbly effect seen here.
  • WARNING: be VERY careful handling dry ice – do not let it touch exposed skin. We use gloves and tongs to transfer into each glass. You only need a very small sliver to create the effect. If you add to much, the drink will start to freeze.
• Make ahead for a party: make the ice cubes up to several weeks ahead of time. You can also multiply and make the base cocktail mixture (except for the ginger beer) ahead of time and store in a pitcher. When ready to serve, stir/whisk well, pour into each glass and top off with ginger beer.

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