"blender drinks" news and stories

With the renewed interest in classic cocktails over the past decade, it wasn't uncommon to get a little attitude from some bartenders -- whether in hip urban establishments or honky tonk bars -- if you ordered piña colada ("the blender is broken"), a Mai Tai, or any other foofy drink that traditionally comes in a funky mug with a fruit salad garnish. Not anymore. Tiki drinks and all their gewgaw are back in full swing.

In the early 30's, Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt figured out how to make some money with his interest in Polynesian culture. He named his place Don the Beachcomber (and later even changed his own name to Donn Beach), becoming quite the entertainer and host at his restaurant bar. Legend has it that he ran a water hose on top of his tin roof to mimic the sound of rain so customers would keep chatting and drinking. With over 80 drinks to his credit, he is the father of the tiki cocktail craze that lasted for decades. With copy cats galore attempting to make a profit off his concept, many of the liquor bottles at the Beachcomber bar were replaced with ones labeled with cryptic letters and numbers to keep the recipes as secret as possible.

California's Victor Bergeron built on the Beachcomber's success. His tiki entertainment empire became known as Trader Vic's. His books Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink (1946) and the Bartender's Guide by Trader Vic (1947) are worth adding to your library.

My partner Demián and I live in the desert in Baja California Sur, Mexico. This time of year the heat is rising and the humidity is heavy. Two of our favorite ways to cool off is to crank up the blender for frosty libations and to pull out the vintage Tupperware popsicle sets for adult ice pops.

Here are a few tips if you're going with a blender drink:

• People always fret over how much ice to use, but an easy way to figure it out is to simply build the drink in the glass you're going to use, then dump all of the ingredients with the ice into the blender. You'll wind up with a tiny bit extra that you can mound up at the top of the glass, making your drink look all pretty.

• For easier blending, add liquid, fruit chunks, and then the ice.

More tips and a recipe for Strawberry Margarita Ice Pops after the jump.

I'm not a big coffee fan. Love the flavor, but it upsets my stomach. But I do have some iced coffee drinks during the summer, as long as there is some chocolate or mocha element in it. I like the Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottles (Mocha flavor), and I'm a fan of Nestle's Iced Java syrup.

This recipe has me a bit confused, though maybe it's just because I'm not a coffee guy. It's from allrecipes.com and it's a recipe for iced coffee. Do you really need a blender to make iced coffee? Or is this literally for iced coffee, a thicker drink, and not the cold coffee drink we're used to?