Cocktail Week: #3 Salted Caramel

If I am going to choose between expending my extra calories on a cocktail  or dessert... 99% of the time I'll go with the cocktail (usually wine is my real choice). But this is a cocktail that didn't require a choice and it was worth those extra calories either way.

We found this recipe for the Salted Caramel milkshake calling for us to make it in the Food Network magazine so when we had my sister and her fiance' over for dinner on the patio we made this as our dessert.

It was great evening. We kicked it off with the Berry Margaritas

 and some grilled nectarines

 wrapped in prosciutto and

drizzled with balsamic.

For dinner I made a grilled flank steak with olive tapenade, another Food Network recipe.

Our side dishes were both picked up at the farmer's market that morning: grilled corn and a

fresh fava bean salad

 that G made from a Bobby Flay recipe. The fava bean salad was awesome, so fresh, delicate and light but to be honest we had never cooked with fava beans before so we didn't have nearly enough of them. We each just a small side to enjoy. Next time we know the pods look much bigger than the amount of beans they provide.

We enjoyed our main course with a bottle of 2008 Skookum Red from the Walter Dacon winery that Tracy & Mike picked up at the tasting room the day before.

We had a great meal and enjoyed each other's company but I must tell you technology has really made an impact on get togethers. We spent some of the evening with 2 of us on iphones and one on the ipad playing words with friends. We decided it wasn't totally unsociable as we were actually playing each other...but it can be a bit sad scene sometimes. Especially if you get all of us with our ipads out.

In this photo Tracy's actually journaling the wine and Mike's reading about wineries we had been discussing

Finally it was time for dessert.

We are all fans of salted caramels. We also had a bottle of creamed tequila that my mom had bought G for Christmas in Mexico that was calling to be used so we used that for the tequila in the recipe. G whipped up some home made whip cream and wow, this was a winner of a drink.

It's definitely one recipe we'll use again for a special occasion or treat to share with friends. We highly recommend this cocktail. The recipes says that it will make 4 mini shakes and we followed the amounts and it made 4 full martini size drinks. Just the perfect amount of this rich caramel drink.

All recipes linked above