It’s difficult to comprehend why someone might not like passion fruit. Even the smell of freshly cut passion fruit is intoxicating. Fleurie, however, is obsessed. She’s been teased for returning from the fruit market with nothing but a bag of passion fruit. In fact, Anika once nicknamed Fleurie, ‘flaming passion fruit’. It’s unsurprising she enjoys a Pornstar Martini.
Anika first came across the Pornstar Martini as a student, at a bar in Soho’s Old Compton Street called LAB. The thick, sweet vanilla-scented passion fruit mix would usually be too much – but this was just right, and the Champagne on the side cut through it perfectly.
It’s to be expected, therefore, that the Pornstar Martini was one of the first recipes we tried to perfect together. Rather than rely on Passoa, as a lot of online recipes seem to, we thought we should start with the best ingredients – lots of fresh passion fruit. After painstakingly separating the juice from the seeds, we were left with about enough juice for half a drink, and had spent enough to buy a Pornstar Martini from a bar. We worked through a lot of online recipes and none of them were quite right. Anika just wanted to remake the incredible drink she had at LAB, so searched instead for that. Well, it turns out that the Pornstar Martini was actually created at LAB by Douglas Ankrah – no wonder it was so good! It seemed like a no-brainer that that should be the foundation for our recipe. A couple of small tweaks for our preferences, and we’re here – the perfect Pornstar Martini.
For one serving, you will need:
· Cocktail shaker
· Martini glass
· Shot glass
· 50ml Absolut Vanilia Vanilla vodka (Cariel is also great)
· 60ml Funkin passion fruit puree – trust us, it tastes just like fresh passion fruit and you can freeze the remainder in an ice cube tray
· 15ml Passoa
· 1 tablespoon icing sugar
· ½ teaspoon of high-quality vanilla extract (if you’re not using vanilla vodka, then increase this to ¾ of a teaspoon)
· Shot (25ml – 30ml) of Champagne
· Half a passion fruit, for garnish
· A generous handful of ice
Place all of the ingredients except for the Champagne into a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for about 20 seconds. Strain into the martini glass and garnish with the passion fruit half. Serve with a shot of Champagne on the side. Some people like to mix the Champagne into the drink, but we prefer to keep it on the side – sipping, almost like a palate cleanser (mixing it in dilutes the flavours too much).
For extra flare, we love to very gently warm some extra vanilla vodka in a pan (this makes it more volatile) and pour it into the passionfruit half, before lighting on fire! Brings some light to Fleurie’s ‘flaming passionfruit’ nickname!
Stay salty af,
Anika & Fleurie