So who’s partying today? We’ve got Independence Day all sewn up in our office with at least two Elvis lookalikes, an Abraham Lincoln and several stars and stripes costumes being paraded - well, every day is a fancy dress day for the www.abfab.co.uk team!

 

If you’re not American and not sure what to wear, we’d always go with the traditional themes for 4th of July - you can’t go wrong with a big old stars and stripes flag - you can tie it around you, safety pin it to your shoulders like a cape - useful, practical, and can be recycled as a tablecloth or beach towel.

 

Want to go the whole hog? Then get some fireworks (who needs an excuse for fireworks? We don’t! But we do let our neighbours know that we’re going to be letting them off so they can get the dogs and cats in) and some root beer, turn up the Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner and get your rock on! We also favour a crispy fried chicken dinner and for a grown up party, why not make some hard slush puppies? They take 30 minutes and you get a dozen from our recipe.

 

Independence Day hard slush puppies

 

250 g white sugar

200 ml water

crushed ice

 

Red slush

125 g halved strawberries, halved

60ml Bacardi or other white rum

Red food colouring

 

Blue slush

Juice of one lime

60ml blue Curacao                

 

Melt the sugar in the water and boil for about two minutes. Divide into two equal amounts.

 

Red slush - pour half the hot syrup over the strawberries and leave to marinate for an hour then puree with the rum. Strain, add a drop of red food colouring and chill.

 

Blue slush - put the other half of the syrup in a bowl with the lime and Curacao and stir. Chill

 

Pour the two chilled syrups into squeezy bottles. Crush your ice in a blender and pack into glasses.  Squirt red syrup into the left hand side of the glass and blue into the right, leaving a white gap in the middle. Drink!