“Tronksy Montell” – Pink Dragon Fruit and Strawberry Cocktail with Edible Glitter Strawberry

When I decided to make cocktails inspired by some of my favorite drag performers, I knew I’d be making a Trixie one. While I’ve never met Trixie in person, she is extremely well known in the Milwaukee gay community and I’ve been going to This Is It! (the Milwaukee gay bar she owns) for like, 15 years.

If you make a Trixie cocktail, it’s mandated by law that it *has* to be pink. Using that base I wanted to try something I’ve never worked with. Besides, using ‘red’ things like strawberries and berries can only really make a light shade of pink and I wanted bright, vibrant, offendingly pink.

I very quickly found dragon fruit, although it was during that whole Pink Sauce debacle (see Ann Reardon’s video about that mess: https://youtu.be/4GbZp4VVzOo). But instead of neon ranch dressing, I made a tasty cocktail that doesn’t look like something Slimer Barbie left on the walls (I would absolutely watch a Barbie/Ghostbusters team up movie, as someone who played with both dolls and ghostbuster figures as kid, the plotlines are endless.)

Creating a Hot Pink Dragon Fruit Cocktail

Working with dragonfruit almost immediately proved difficult. That stuff is *messy* and I didn’t like working with the frozen cubes found in my grocery store. I decided to go with dragonfruit powder instead

This powder wasn’t super easy to fully combine in a cocktail shaker, so I went to my old cheat tool for cocktails than need violent shaking, the bullet bender. I used this Ninja blender as the reviews I found online said it was good at crushing and blending ice without being too expensive.

The other issue I ran into almost immediately is dragon fruit is a pH indicator, with the vibrant shades of pink happening in the acidic range and turning a dull blueish purple when in the basic range. This was pretty easily fixed by just making sure I had enough lime juice to keep it pink pink.

I also really wanted to have a cotton candy “wig” as the garnish, but I ran into issues both finding high-quality cotton candy and then using it as a garnish when it immediately dissolves the second it touches liquid.

Eventually, I landed on a strawberry glitter fan garnish. I figured I’d keep this one fairly simple since the previous cocktail inspired by a drag performer I made was *quite* involved with the garnish.

Next I needed flavor. Dragon fruit has an almost non-existent flavor that wouldn’t stand up to any other ingredients. I therefore decided to use Dragon Berry rum as the base and then went to the grocery store to find something that at least reminded people of dragon fruit. My local grocery store had this musk melon aloe drink that was kind of wonky by itself, but it proved to be a great mixer, especially with my other flavors. 10/10 would recommend experimenting with.