Kiss 2009 and shitty homemade cocktails goodbye with this liquid deliciousness. Welcome to 2010—year of the ginger martini

What you’ll need:

* 1 bottle of decent vodka, decent being the key word here, or a low-end vodka that’s been run through a Brita filter a few times. Be ye warned—if you use something low-end (which I did the first time), your cocktail will come out tasting like gingery battery acid.

* 3/4 cup of freshly chopped ginger

* 1 teaspoon lime juice

* 1-2 coffee filters

* 1/2 cup of sugar

* 1 cup of water

* a splash of Champagne and/or pineapple juice (both are optional)

* powdered sugar rim (also optional)

To get your drink on:

Pop open your swanky vodka and pour out a couple of shots. Put 1/2 cup of freshly chopped ginger into the bottle and leave in a dark, still place for ten days, giving the bottle a strong shake once every couple of days to ensure that the ginger is infusing and not just settling on the bottom of the bottle. Once the vodka has infused, pour it through the coffee filter to sift out the larger ginger chunks. Next, place the water, sugar and leftover ginger into a pan and heat to boil. Once the sugar has completely dissolved, cut the heat and let cool to room temperature. Once the gingery simple syrup has cooled, get ready to drink. Prepare a martini glass with a powdered sugar rim (if desired) and mix 3 parts ginger vodka with 1 part simple syrup, the teaspoon of lime juice and splash of Champagne and/or pineapple juice. Your concoction should look something like this (minus the wintery backyard of course):

Deliciousness ahoy!

Here’s to a fantastic new year, TOC readers.