Old-Fashioned

For ➊ cocktail
1 sugar cube (or ½ ts loose sugar)*
3 dashes Angostura bitters
club soda
6 cl rye whisky or Bourbon

Place the sugar cube (or ½ ts loose sugar) in an old-fashioned glass.
Wet it down with 2 or 3 dashes of Angostura bitters and a short splash of water or club soda. Crush the sugar.
Rotate the glass so that the sugar grains and bitters give it a lining. Add a large ice cube. Pour in the rye (or bourbon).
Serve with a stirring rod.

*Or use simple syrup (¼ to ¾ whiskey).

The Old-Fashioned is the ur-cocktail, dating from the early 19th century. A 'cock tail' was a morning drink made up of a little water, a little sugar, a lot of liquor, and a couple splashes of bitters. Freeze the water, make it with whiskey, and you have an Old-Fashioned. The 60's variation, with a cherry and orange peel was revived with the 'Mad Men' television series.
The Jack Daniel's bourbon variation: gently muddle orange peel, cherry, 1.5 cl sugar syrup and 4 dashes of bitters in an old-fashioned glass. Optionally, add a Maraschino cherry. Add ice and stir in part of the JD Single Barrel bourbon until it dilutes. Keep adding Single Barrel and ice. Garnish with orange peel.
It could also be made with Dutch or Belgian jenever or rum.

Montezuma chocolate cocktail

For ➋ (large)- ➍(medium)
60 cl milk
75 g plain chocolate
pinch allspice
pinch powdered ginger
1 tbs honey
7.5 cl rum
5 cl eau de vie de marc or brandy
rind ½ lemon, grated

Heat the milk gently with the chocolate, spices and honey.  When the chocolate has melted, leave to cool. Pour the milk into a cocktail shaker, add rum and brandy/eau de vie de marc, and grated lemon rind. Shake well.
Refrigerate.*
Shake again before serving.

*Serve it warm, without cooling. Don't shake,but blend.

A cold grog variation on Mexican spiced hot cocoa.

Mexican hot chocolate with tequila & cayenne

For ➋ servings
70 cl milk
125 g premium dark chocolate, broken into chunks
6 tbs cocoa
2 tbs cane sugar
⅛-¼ ts cayenne (or paprika)
12 cl tequila (or white rum)
10 cl heavy whipping cream
ground cinnamon for garnish

Warm the milk in a medium size heavy saucepan on medium heat, watching carefully.
Add the chocolate, the cocoa and the sugar.
Heat until the chocolate dissolves, whisking to combine all ingredients.
Season with the cayenne pepper. Start with ⅛ teaspoon and season to your taste.
Pour the warm milk into 2 large mugs and add 2 oz of tequila.
Top with whipped cream. Sprinkle whipping cream with cinnamon.

Zombie cocktail

For ➊
1 measure* dark rum
1 measure* white rum
1 measure* old rum (optional)
½ measure* apricot brandy**
2 measures* pineapple juice
½ measure* lime juice
2 ts powdered sugar***
cocktail cherry & pineapple wedge

Add all the ingredients into a cocktail mixer with ice and shake, then pour into a hurricane glass. Spear the pineapple and cherry onto a cocktail stick and place on the edge of the glass.
Finally add a straw.

*1 measure would be 3 cl.
**Use orange curaçao instead.
***Use a (grenadine or cinnamon) syrup instead.

The Zombie, also known as skull-puncher, is a cocktail with an extremely high alcohol content (1 Zombie equals 3-4 average cocktails, hence the Zombie name). It is made of fruit juices, liqueurs, and various rums. The first recipe seemed to have had 3 different kinds of rum, lime juice, falernum, Angostura bitters, Pernod, grenadine, and a combination of cinnamon syrup and grapefruit juice. It was invented by Donn Beach of Hollywood's Don the Beachcomber restaurant in late 1934. It became popular at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It survived as a trendy cocktail at tiki Hawaiian style parties of the 40's and 50's.

Le cocktail Lumumba

For ➊
6 cl dark Cuban rum*
12 cl milk**
5 ts cocoa powder**
whipped cream*
chocolate shavings*

For the warm version, heat the milk to drinking temperature.

Add rum and cocoa. Stir.

Top with whipped cream and add chocolate shavings.

For the cold version, mix milk and cocoa (or use chocolate milk**). Add rum*. Pour on ice cubes.

*For the original version, use vodka. Omit cream and chocolate shavings. Use brandy instead, or an equal mix of brandy and coffee liquor.
**For the original version, use dark chocolate milk.

When after the Congolese independence in 1960, Patrice Lumumba became prime minister and declared himself a partisan of mild communism, his fate was sealed by murder. In the former motherland Belgium, his name was used to mix a quite racist, but delicious cocktail of chocolate milk and vodka (the Russian influence). After his death, he was considered a martyr by African nations and by the USSR who honored his legacy with a stamp.
The cocktail disappeared in Belgium but lived on in several versions, hot and cold, with rum substituting the vodka (suitable enough, as Cuban fighters were involved in the Congo wars). (Sometimes it is replaced with brandy and/or coffee liquor, omitting the milk).
The warm version comes close to a simple version of the mighty Mexican serpent's chocolate.

Serpent's chocolate

For ➋
150 g extremely bitter chocolate
4 tbs strong espresso coffee*
½ tbs butter
3 egg yolks, creamed
3 egg whites, beaten

Melt the chocolate slowly with the coffee on top of the stove. Stir and when it forms a cream remove from heat.**
Add the butter and the egg yolks immediately stirring in well.
Cool the chocolate cream.
Fold in the egg whites gently. Refrigerate for 24 h.
Remove about 30 m before serving. Embellish with a dot of slightly sugared whipped cream or a drizzle of amaretto.

*Alternatively, use 1 tbs of brown rum and 3 tbs coffee.
**Slow melting in the microwave can achieve good results. You might need to adjust the liquid.

(Slightly) Mexican, bearing the name of the Serpent God who brought chocolate to the world .