…I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain…

Today, vodka was my friend. We hung out together for the entire evening. We we did that. We bathed in a Purple Rain cocktail, oops…a couple of Purple Rain cocktails!

It was great. For vodka.  I was amazed at the number of variations of this drink. My Purple Rain cocktail ended up being a loose interpretation of a few recipes.  One recipe called for grape juice (that seemed to make sense visually, but I didn’t want it to taste like Koolaid), another called for cranberry juice and most all called for Blue Curacao. 

Blue + Red, Right?

In elementary school we learned that blue and red makes purple, so I swapped out the grape juice for grenadine to create the perfect purple and because honestly, I was freestyling, it took a little time to get the purple I wanted.

I tried one with pineapple juice.  It tasted great but aesthetically, it looked like a royal hot, muddy mess.  So, I played around until I landed on the clear, royal purple.  If you try it and don’t care so much about looks, try it with the pineapple juice,. I have to admit, it’s tasty. Although it’s not a fruity drink, it kind of reminds me of the Berry Vodka Smash.

I also happened to have blue sanding sugar (seriously, who has blue sanding sugar hanging around in their cabinet?). I tinted the blue sugar with a few drops of grenadine and got a shade of purple close enough to match the drink that was a beautiful royal purple. It was so pretty, I didn’t want to drink it. Ok, that’s not true and boy I’ll tell ya, for a vodka drink, it was really good!

Homemade Food Junkie created a stunningly beautiful Purple Rain cocktail. Here’s my version of the Purple Rain cocktail.

Ingredients

2 oz. vodka
¼ oz grenadine
½ oz. blue curacao
2 oz. club soda
Juice of ½ small lime

Optional to rim glass:
3 TBSP White sugar
1 TBSP Simple syrup
Few drops of grenadine
Few drops of blue curacao
Lime wheel

Mix sugar, grenadine and blue curacao well until you reach the desired shade of purple.  Dip the rim of a glass in simple syrup and roll the rim in the sugar until the entire rim is coated. 

In a cocktail shaker, fill halfway with crushed ice, add vodka, grenadine, blue curacao, club soda and lime juice.  Shake until well chilled.  Pour into glass garnish with a lime wheel and sip slow!