Marmalade Collins in a Jar
Vodka, lemon, and a spoon of marmalade shaken in a jam jar over cooler ice.
- calories
- 160
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 46
- protein
- 0 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 2 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 2 min
- water
- 120 ml cold
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Drink
- Cooler only
- No cook
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Vodka | 50 ml | |
|---|---|---|
| Marmalade | 1 tsp | orange or lemon, both work |
| Caster sugar | 1 tsp | superfine dissolves cold, granulated mostly won't |
| Lemon juice | 25 ml | bottled travels fine |
| Soda water | to fill | small cans, not a big bottle that goes flat |
| Lemon wedge | 1 | optional |
| Cooler ice | enough to fill the jar |
Method
- Put the vodka, lemon juice, sugar, and marmalade in a clean jam jar with a tight lid.
- Fill the jar with ice from the cooler. Screw the lid down hard.
- Shake until the outside of the jar is cold in your hand, about fifteen seconds. The marmalade needs the agitation to break up.
- Open it, top the ice back up, and pour soda water over the top. Drop in the lemon wedge if you brought one.
This is a Tom Collins with a spoon of marmalade in it, which sounds wrong and isn’t. The peel in the marmalade carries bitter oils that plain sugar syrup doesn’t have, and those oils give the drink something to push against the lemon. It also thickens the texture slightly, so the soda has body to sit on.
The jar is the shaker. That is the whole reason this belongs in a camp kit rather than a bar: no tin, no strainer, no measuring beyond a spoon. Everything except the ice is shelf-stable, so the only cooler dependency is the ice itself, and superfine sugar matters more than it sounds. Regular granulated sits at the bottom of a cold jar and stays there.
Packing
Vodka goes in a plastic flask, not glass. Lemon juice and marmalade ride in small screw-top bottles or a squeeze tube. One wide-mouth jar per two people is enough if you take turns.
Variations
- Skip the soda and shake it long for a sour version in half the volume.
- Swap the marmalade for apricot or fig jam. Same job, less bitterness.
- Leave the vodka out and it is still a decent lemonade over ice.
https://hedgecombers.com/smirnoff-marmalade-collins-cocktail-recipe