Your Valentine’s Day Recipe for a Powerful Love Potion

Two parts roses to three parts kitsch. Photographer and art director Mirka Laura Severa shows us how to make an irresistible love cocktail

Love, in all its guises, and on any day of the year, entails a heady mix of emotions. Mirka Laura Severa agrees: “As sweet and nice as it is, love can also hurt,” the photographer and art director says. Her new film Love Me Blender makes this point deftly: it depicts a woman blending a love cocktail – dusty pink, viscous, and thick with consumerist tradition.

“In a way love is a symbiosis of beauty and pain,” Severa continues, “and the cocktail symbolises this. It has the perfect balance – not too sweet, not too sour.” As Severa’s heroine snips the heads off roses and gulps down sparkling wine in her candy red outfit of satin gloves and a belted dress, we know neither who this cocktail is being mixed (and, literally, misted with love) for, or whether it exists simply for her own enjoyment. Either way, Love Me Blender is a delectably kitsch and irreverent look at love. Should it inspire you to concoct a Valentine’s drink in its honour, find the recipe below. (S.W.A.L.K.)

Ingredients:

Five pink roses (plus one for garnish)
Good glug of champagne
One pink praline confection (preferably heart-shaped)

Method:

Using scissors, cut the heads off the roses, leaving around one centimetre of stalk, and put into blender
Add champagne to the blender, enough to cover the roses
Sip remaining champagne
Toss in the praline confection
Blend until paled in colour and semi-smooth

Serve:

Pour into sundae glass
Garnish with one rose (trim stalk to fit)
Serve with straw (preferably pink)
Mist generously with Love 

With thanks to Marcioz and Dinamo Typefaces