I couldn’t decide if I was going to make a dessert or a drink for my final post this week. They both sounded like good ideas to me. But as you can see, the drink recipe won out. Why? There’s just something about a dinner of steak and potatoes that screams “martini” to me. And today I’m hearing “tangerine martini”.
This recipe for a Tangerine & Honey Thyme Martini looked and sounded so fresh, and my husband loves tangerines and martinis. How perfect would a tangerine martini for his birthday dinner?! Now let’s hope I can find some tangerines at the grocery store. This is Florida, after all. How hard could it be to find citrus fruit…
Tangerine & Thyme Martini cocktail – a refreshing vodka martini with fresh tangerine juice and sweetened with a honey thyme simple syrup.
The Ingredients
It turns out that citrus fruit was not hard to find but tangerines were. They are in season from October through April, and it’s June. All was not lost though! A quick google told me mandarin oranges and tangerines are cousins, and the grocery store had mandarins. Specifically, Gold Nugget mandarin oranges, which, like tangerines, are seedless. My tangerine martini was saved!
I had my husband try one as a snack to make sure they had a tangerine-like taste and he approved. The only difference I noticed is they seem smaller than tangerines and not quite as juicy. I used 2 per martini to get a 1/4 cup of juice for each. That ended up being just the right amount. FYI: The recipe says 1 tangerine should give about a 1/2 cup of juice.
The rest of the ingredients were things I had on hand. I even had the fresh thyme leftover from the steak recipe. Sometimes the stars just align 🙂
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The Process
This tangerine martini recipe is split into 2 parts: making the honey thyme simple syrup and making the martini itself. First, of course, was making the simple syrup. That took only 4 minutes and was pretty straightforward. The only question I had was how long to let the thyme steep. I left it in the simple syrup while it cooled for a few hours in the refrigerator and removed it when I made my martinis.
The martinis were even easier to make and only took me 3 minutes. The only thing I might change is straining the juice before adding it to the cocktail shaker. Maybe even the syrup too because my martinis were cloudy. I think a fine mesh cocktail strainer would take care of that if it bothers you.
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