Spontaneous and imaginative, mixologists Flannery and Katherine Good have always been inspired by anything colorful and sweet. As girls, the fascination started off with candy, and the Shirley Temples with extra cherries they made eventually graduated into mojitos and margaritas. When they combined the best of both worlds, it really shook up their true passion.

The sisters began experimenting with candy liquor infusions when they started their cocktail blog, Fashionably Bombed. One of their first creations was a bubblegum martini made with homemade bubblegum infused vodka and garnished with gumballs.  Not only was it crazy festive, it was also irresistibly delicious.  After that sweet success, they began infusing everything they could get their candy-coated hands on, and the result was Candy Cocktails, a book full of the tastiest candy cocktail concoctions imaginable.

“My favorite thing about the book is that almost all of the cocktails have a candy liquor infusion base,” said Flannery Good. “Bubblegum rum for our Bubblegum Mojito, Cherry Jolly Rancher vodka for our Chocolate Covered Cherry Martini, and Banana Runts tequila for our Circus Peanut Margarita are just a few of my favorites.”

The book is exploding with 50 sweet, sour, and fruity candy-based recipes, and there’s a whole chapter dedicated to teaching the reader how to make candy liquor infusions. There are also selections on spirits, glassware, tools and equipment, a garnish and rim guide, 100 full-color photographs, and even a guide to throwing a festive candy cocktail party. The book is packed with all the information you’d need to shake up a night filled with fabulous fun. According to Flannery, not only is the book made to show readers how to make infusions, but to really let their imaginations run wild coming up with their own.

As if creating Candy Cocktails wasn’t exciting enough, the sisters agreed that the experimentation process and working their way up to that point was nothing but sugar-twisted fun. They’d go crazy in the candy store, snatching up all of the sweets and chocolates from the shelves that they felt had the potential to make mouth-watering cocktails.

“There was so much candy bursting out of every nook and cranny in my house that it felt like the Willy Wonka factory,” said Katherine Good. “After shopping for candy, we would sit down and brainstorm, deciding which candies would go best with which types of cocktails. Then we would bust out the bottles and get to experimenting.”

No matter if you kick back with the refreshing Breath Mint Julep made from Altoids-infused Bourbon, or down a Sour Lemon Drop Shot created with Lemonheads-infused vodka, these boozy candy recipes were made to satisfy. Whether you’re a chocoholic, licorice lover, or a diehard fan of Sour Patch Kids, there’s a whole world of sugar-kissed bliss waiting to be explored in Candy Cocktails.

“While most people outgrow their passion for candy, mine stuck with me well into adulthood,” said Flannery. “So to get paid to invent cocktails made from candy is a dream come true.”

No doubt about it, Candy Cocktails is a very festive and girly cocktail book – the perfect treat for a wild girls’ night. It’s available in most book stores around the country including Barnes & Noble, and online at amazon.com.

Written for the upcoming print edition of Chilled Magazine.