Walking Through New Orleans - The Snowball

Snowballs have to be one of my all-time favorite New Orleans treats. I once spent a whole summer trying to track down a "wedding cake"-flavored snowball whose sugary syrup made the ball of shaved ice taste exactly like store-bought icing.

So I was more than intrigued when I walked into the Swizzle Stick Bar at Café Adelaide in New Orleans last Thursday and saw Talia Neal-Walthall's creation, Sailor Jerry's Snowball, on the drink menu. The young mixologist says she created it just to see if she could.

Talia uses Sailor Jerry rum, passionfruit syrup, muddled blackberries and fresh lime juice in place of the snowball's traditional flavored syrup and pours the cocktail over the requisite ball of crushed ice.

It looks like a high-society concoction, but halfway through the drink, you remember it's a snowball. You have to drop any inhibitions about making a mess, take a deep breath and chomp down hard on your drink.

Of course, if snowballs aren't your thing, the Swizzle Stick's resident mixologist, Lu Brow, makes a mean Corpse Reviver No. 2. Brow's signature drink is a "soft cocktail" made with gin and elderberry liqueur that she's dubbed the Ginnifer Flowers.