The 12 Cocktails of Christmas
Recipes inspired by global craft cocktail culture, with a few dashes of personal history for extra flavor. By Melissa Rayworth and Ted Anthony.
The taxi had dropped us off a good hundred yards from our actual destination, but we couldn’t blame the driver. The place we were seeking wasn’t exactly easy to find.
So we walked along a massive Bangkok thoroughfare called Asok Montri as cars whizzed by us. We walked past the old Siam Society, where Ted’s father had been a life member since the late 1950s, and we kept going until we stopped just short of the water-taxi canal that runs along Petchaburi Road— one of the last big canals remaining in a city once full of them.
Turning down a tiny side street, we scanned our surroundings in search of an unmarked door that led to a tiny, hidden bar called Q&A.
At that moment, the place — appropriately — held more questions for us than answers. But it would soon become a catalyst for the learning experience that has us sharing these recipes with you today.
That night, we stepped up to a heavy, unmarked wooden door and — really hoping we’d guessed right — we pushed it open. Inside, we found a Southeast Asian version of some impossibly stylish place where Don Draper might go after work for one perfect drink (or, let’s be honest, several).
We made our way through the empty foyer and stepped deeper into the narrow space. The walls were encased in a caramel-colored hardwood polished to a crystalline sheen, and they curved inward as they met the room’s low ceiling. It was as if we’d suddenly boarded a perfectly chic, midcentury-modern train car bound for somewhere spectacular.
We slipped into two leather seats at the bar and began talking with the bartender. At Q&A, There’s always plenty of time to talk with the bartender— in fact, that’s part of the point. Flanked by rows of flavored syrups and homemade bitters and creatively infused liquors, these bartenders don’t have any interest in cranking out basic cocktails.
They’ve dreamed up a menu of drinks that are complex and remarkable, yet somehow not pretentious. But their real talent is creating something just for you. They want to know what base liquors you like and what kinds of tastes — what foods, what flowers — speak to your heart and mind.
Over the course of three-plus years visiting this bar and others — Vesper, Evil Man Blues, the now-defunct but truly wonderful, railroad-themed Track 17, Iron Fairies and its sister (brother?) bar Iron Balls, and the curiously named, Edwardian pharmacy-inspired Sugar Ray You’ve Just Been Poisoned — we became students of craft cocktails.
We’re journalists, so we didn’t just want to consume these artful drinks. We wanted to know how they were constructed — to understand what made them tick.
And that served especially us well when we relocated, at least partially, back to our longtime home in suburban Pittsburgh. There, we no longer had cocktail bars like this a few steps from our front door.
Pittsburgh is awash in good microbreweries and new ones are opening constantly. But much as we appreciate the artistry of the ‘burgh’s local brewers, we’d trade an entire growler of IPA for just one exquisite cocktail.
And although the city has its share of nice cocktail bars, they’re a very long Lyft ride from our house. So we began teaching ourselves to become our own master mixologists. Ted, who had begun making his own bitters in his final weeks in Bangkok from tropical fruits he couldn’t bring home, arrived back in Pennsylvania and began infusing his own spirits.
Two years later, we have a plastic file box stuffed with index cards (no, really — analog index cards, color-coded by base liquor) that hold our homemade recipes. We dip into them when friends come over and we’re constantly experimenting with new possibilities.
So this year, in lieu of the holiday card we didn’t have time to create, we welcome you to The 12 Cocktails of Christmas — a dozen recipes and thoughts on what makes them work. We spent the latter part of December 2019 updating the top drink each day until we reached a dozen (yes, we got done right after Christmas, but our schedules were pretty crazed with new job adventures, current job obligations, two teenagers, two cats — the list, just like yours, goes on).
We hope this brought you all some holiday cheer. Please do share these recipes with your friends and family. Please try your own — be it recipes, infusions or something we haven’t thought of. And as this year draws to a close, please take a moment to raise a glass — no matter what it may hold — to one another and to all the adventures and good things ahead in 2020.
Happy holidays,
Our 12 Cocktails of Christmas are all collected in one page below for browsing and sharing as a whole. But click here if you want to go to — or share — a particular one:
- The First Cocktail of Christmas: “Opening Day”
- The Second Cocktail of Christmas: “Afternoon Delight”
- The Third Cocktail of Christmas: “Subourbon Oasis”
- The Fourth Cocktail of Christmas: “The Phipps Conservatory”
- The Fifth Cocktail of Christmas: “The Sour Spice”
- The Sixth Cocktail of Christmas: “The Dark Horse”
- The Seventh Cocktail of Christmas: “Pop Culture Books Night”
- The Eighth Cocktail of Christmas: “The Everything Bagel”
- The Ninth Cocktail of Christmas: “The Loopy Fruit”
- The 10th Cocktail of Christmas: “It’s Alive!”
- The 11th Cocktail of Christmas: “The True North”
- The 12th Cocktail of Christmas: “Grandma Molly”
THE 12th COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: The ‘Grandma Molly’
Melissa’s maternal grandmother, Mary Celina “Molly” Farrell, had a very interesting early life. The daughter of a saloonkeeper in Brooklyn, Jim Farrell (no relation to the current Farrell’s Bar in Park Slope), she grew up in an apartment above the barroom in the first years of the 20th century. She wasn’t allowed downstairs, so she’d sit at the top of the staircase and listen to the male patrons gulp their whiskey and serve up their corned beef and cabbage at the steam table. We often picture her there, hearing the voices and wondering, and we thought our final edition of the 12 Cocktails of Christmas — a riff on Bailey’s Irish Cream — deserved her name.
“Wait,” you say. “You named it after her just for this?” Well, yes. While the first 11 cocktails we offered up to you have existed for a while, and were concocted by Melissa and Ted over the past two years, this one was invented today — mere minutes before this post — as a holiday drink that you can keep in the fridge and that will sustain you during the short and chilly days between Christmas and New Year’s.
We owe some credit to Bailey’s, the gold standard for this kind of creamy stuff, and some to Eric Prum and Josh Williams, whose lovely book Infuse and its companion, Shake, have inspired us as we try to invent new, weird things that taste good.
While original recipes for Irish cream call for, well, Irish whiskey, we wanted to go a slightly different route. We wanted something wintry and dark but also with a whiff of the exotic. So we actually ventured outside of the brown-liquor family entirely.
We took one of our favorite easy infusions — cheap vanilla vodka infused for four days with cut-up mission figs and crushed green cardamom pods — and used it as a base liquor, adding it to the cream and condensed milk and the coffee that gives the drink the nonalcoholic part of its punch. We also used vanilla paste, which we find offers a more intense vanilla flavor than the slightly chemical taste of supermarket vanilla extract (which will certainly work in a pinch).
As a backup, in case the combination was gross, we made a second Mason jarful using coffee bourbon from the wonderful Litchfield Distillery in Connecticut.
We needn’t have worried. Both batches turned out great — creamy, flavorful, indulgent. But while the coffee-bourbon edition was predictably pleasing, the jar made with fig-cardamom vodka made it into our little plastic file box as something we’ll return to again and again — and something that will pull us back to those days when Molly Farrell, later Molly Rayworth or simply “Gram,” was sitting at the top of the stairs, wishing she might join in the hubbub below.
‘GRANDMA MOLLY’
4½ oz. fig/cardamom-infused vanilla vodka (any whiskey will also do)
4 oz. heavy cream
4 oz. sweetened condensed milk
1½ oz. strong black coffee, unflavored
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa
¾ tsp vanilla paste (alternatively, add vanilla extract to taste; use sparingly)In 16-ounce Mason jar, combine all ingredients except liquor and coffee. Then, quickly (to prevent curdling) add liquor and coffee, close jar and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Refrigerate mixture for at least 2½ hours.
Serve in small, stemless glasses. One Mason jar will yield six to eight servings. Mixture will keep for about two weeks in the refrigerator — well past New Year’s Day.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: The fig and cardamom from the infusion worked really nicely with the creaminess of the dairy products to produce a taste we’d never experienced before — at once dark, fruity and creamy, almost like a pudding Ted once tasted in Afghanistan and never forgot. This one manages to be both familiar and eye-openingly exotic, as if our own living room had somehow sailed to a distant shore, a la “Where the Wild Things Are.” It’s a drink and a dessert all at once, but never loses its grown-up identity.
THE 11th COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘The True North’
By now, perhaps you’re sick of all the infusions and intricate combinations and eggwhitery we’ve thrown at you over the past 10 days. Or maybe you’re hankering for something pure, something simple on Christmas Day as the meal cooks. We’ve got just the drink for you — four ingredients and a garnish, combining to create something special.
The calculus behind this drink is that it’s designed to be replicated and riffed upon. If you’re interested in some base materials for cocktails, you should consider having both American-style gin and Luxardo bitter bianco in your cabinet. This drink pairs those two with one of our favorite liqueurs, Italicus, an aperitivo that captures the flavor of bergamot, the operative taste in Earl Grey tea. But the joy of this drink is that if you’ve got the gin and the Luxardo, you can try it with any lighter liqueur and see how the flavors combine.
We named The True North after the frosty clarity its taste provided. The American gin — with less juniper than its British counterpart — provided a nice botanical feel that was balanced by the bitterness of the Luxardo. The bergamot taste of the Italicus gave it a bright, almost Arctic flavor, and the taste of the three spirits together seemed more than the sum of the parts, which is something we’re always trying to achieve when we’re coming up with these crazy blends.
Plus, we just love the Italicus bottle — a deco masterpiece that somehow adds to the experience if it’s nearby.
‘THE TRUE NORTH’
3 oz. American-style gin
¾ oz. Italicus bergamot liqueur
⅓ oz. Luxardo bitter bianco
2 dashes grapefruit (or other citrus) bitters
2 mandarin orange wedges (as garnish)Combine ingredients. Shake with ice. Pour into stemmed or martini glass. Garnish with orange wedges. Makes two.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: It felt pure. It was simple to make yet, as we mentioned, more than the sum of its parts. Without any need for simple syrup or juice, it conveyed a smoothness and almost a gentleness. There were no sharp edges that needed to be sanded off. It felt like winter, like someplace north of Scandinavia where the sun either shines all day or not at all. And while the tastes of its individual ingredients were discernible, they came together to form something completely distinctive.
THE 10th COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘It’s Alive!’
Some nights, we just open our bar and throw things together to see what sticks. Sometimes, after trying this, we walk out onto our deck and throw the results over the side, never to be spoken of again (talkin’ to you, elderflower bloody Mary). But sometimes, an uncanny patchwork of ingredients best suited for other cocktails comes together like Frankenstein’s monster. This one did just that. Hence the name: “It’s Alive!”
Ted wanted to make a drink that enlisted the taste of pink peppercorns, a sweet spice he often uses in cooking. He thought it had cocktail-ingredient potential. So we ground up some of those and then took two things that were unlikely partners — grapefruit vodka and chili amaro, a spicy take on traditional Italian bitter liqueur — and tossed them together, thinking that the polar opposites might work together.
Turns out they do.
We added a bit of one of our home infusions — a tarragon and candied ginger vodka — to the proceedings to balance things out, then garnished it with crushed pink peppercorns at the very end. What emerged was a Frankenstein of a drink that started out tasting like summer and, by the end, had a decidedly wintry and sharp piquancy to it. We weren’t optimistic, necessarily, at the beginning. But we weren’t disappointed at the end. We offer it to you as a nice Christmas Eve cocktail for the parents to enjoy after all stockings are hung by the chimney with care.
Since this drink is a patchwork quilt, don’t be dissuaded if you aren’t infusing anything at home. Ginger liqueur, we suspect, will substitute perfectly for our tarragon-ginger vodka infusion, though you might want to cut the simple syrup a bit if you do that. And we’d be interested in your results if you substitute other amaros. Campari and Aperol are technically amaros, for example, and they might already be on your shelf. We’d love to see how they fare in this mixture, though you’ll lose the nice spicy finish that the chili amaro affords.
Finally, though this drink is fine in any glass, we chose to do it in half-full highball glasses with lots of ice, and sip it with a straw. This provided the lovely bonus of occasionally getting a gentle burst of sweet pink peppercorn taste when the pieces that we garnished the drink with came up through the straw.
‘IT’S ALIVE!’
3 oz. pink grapefruit vodka
1½ oz chili amaro
¾ oz tarragon/candied ginger-infused vodka (substitute ginger liqueur as you wish)
2 dashes tiki bitters
⅓ oz. lime juice
⅓ oz. simple syrup
8 pink peppercorns, crushed
⅔ egg white (optional, for frothiness)Shake all ingredients. Add ice and shake again. Strain into rocks glasses or coupe glasses, or pour over ice into highball glass with a straw (our preferred method). Serves two.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: It’s tart. Though it contains some sweet ingredients, there’s nothing particularly sweet about this drink. The chili in the amaro announced itself without being overpowering and provided a comforting afterburn. Melissa spoke of a “fruity opening and a spicy finish.” We both agreed that it makes you sit up straight — hence, the name. Unlike yesterday’s Loopy Fruit, you are well aware that this is a grown-up drink with alcohol in it, and our choice of the highball glass — and the ice melting within — made this one feel mellower as you sipped through and the minutes passed. Like Henry Frankenstein with his creations, we look forward to mad-scientisting this with other amaros and herbal liqueurs to see what new life it produces.
THE NINTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘The Loopy Fruit’
Sometime along the line while living in Thailand, where the scent of lemongrass is everywhere, we came to a realization (one that’s unprovable, but we’re pretty convinced): One of the operative background flavors in Froot Loops is … lemongrass.
This led us to a question: How could we capture the flavor of a childhood favorite breakfast cereal in a cocktail in a way that’s at least semi-subtle and not simply gimmicky (not that there’s anything wrong with that)?
Experimentation with various fruit liqueurs in assorted combinations eventually produced this gem, one of Melissa’s absolute favorites — and perhaps a sweet tooth’s counterbalance to yesterday’s “Everything Bagel,” which got some, shall we say, less-than-enthusiastic feedback.
We swear this one tastes like Froot Loops. The main ingredient in this is a home infusion, made easily from vodka into which we threw some lemongrass-pandan tea we bought back from Bangkok. It’s a distinctive kind of herbal tea that’s typically served alongside a hot towel whenever you get a foot massage in Bangkok, or cold in small plastic bottles from stalls outside the Bangkok transit system. It’s not that hard to find in the United States — Amazon has several varieties — but infusing a fifth of higher-proof vodka with cut-up lemongrass found in the produce aisle of your supermarket will create a passable substitute that can be mixed into all kinds of cocktails that require a distinctively tropical fruit flavor. We, however, recommend the lemongrass-pandan combination if possible.
The other fruit liqueurs are easily available. Try your own combinations for interesting variations, but we’ve found that the elderflower liqueur and the creme de violette — versatile additions to any cocktail cabinet — are as much the underpinning of this drink as the vodka infusion.
We added a splash of color to the proceedings in a predictable way — by adding actual Froot Loops as garnish.
‘THE LOOPY FRUIT’
2 oz. lemongrass/pandan infused vodka (if you must, you can use citrus vodka; the drink will still be delicious, but you’ll lose the Froot Loopy flavor)
½ oz. Pama pomegranate liqueur
½ oz. elderflower liqueur
½ oz. blood orange liqueur
½ oz. creme de violette
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. lemon juice, freshly squeezed
½ egg whiteDry shake. Add ice and shake again.
Serve in coupe glasses with a small piece of dried fruit (mango is good) or a lemon or lime slice and a toothpick with three to five Froot Loops of different colors threaded onto it.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: Firstly, it’s light. Some concoctions, particularly wintry ones, have a pleasing syrupiness. Not so the Loopy Fruit. It has the consistency of a mall food-court Orange Julius (that’s a recommendation, not a dis) and an astringency that leavens the drink’s sweetness, keeping it in balance. That also makes it dangerous, because you don’t feel like you’re drinking anything that might be regulated by the state. The balance of fruits and florals makes this perfect for a late summer afternoon, though we certainly didn’t mind drinking it two days before Christmas. And the ability to sub ingredients in and out makes this a flexible drink; we’ll be experimenting with variations for years to come.
THE EIGHTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘The Everything Bagel’
Well, this one’s different. And perhaps it’s not for everyone.
Sometimes, cocktails try to approximate their food counterparts. In Bangkok, at a wonderful restaurant called Eat Me, we had one of the best cocktails we’ve ever encountered — the pork larb cocktail, an ode to a spicy and fragrant Thai pork salad, which came complete with a strip of crispy serrano ham across the top of the glass.
But bloody Marys and dirty martinis aside, doing savory in a cocktail can be fraught with potential pitfalls.
That’s why, on the night we decided to invent the Everything Bagel, we figured we might well jettison it after the proof of concept was done. After all, how can a cocktail that includes butter extract and dried onion and garlic on top be any kind of a player in the cocktail landscape?
We employed two of our favorite brown-liquor infusions — rye whiskey infused with roasted caraway seeds (again, easy: pan-roast some caraway seeds for five minutes, let them cool, dump into a Mason jar with rye and forget about it for four days) and regular American whiskey infused with oatmeal (same story). And, in keeping with the drink’s New York delicatessen roots, we threw in some store-bought celery bitters as a flavor accent. Finally, “everything bagel” seasoning was sprinkled across the drink’s foamy cap.
The result is something that tastes … New Yorky and breakfasty. Is this a savory drink? You could say yes, but it’s savory in the way that salted caramel is — with a burnished sweetness that places it unmistakably in the camp of the cocktail rather than the snack.
That said, dip your bagel chip in the concoction and have a crunch.
In the end, this “proof of concept” made it into our permanent repertoire, as evidenced by its presence here today. Let us know what you think. We don’t think you’ll be sorry you tried it.
‘THE EVERYTHING BAGEL’
3 oz. caraway-infused rye whiskey
3 oz. oatmeal-infused whiskey
1½ oz. brown sugar syrup
6 dashes butter extract
1 egg white
6 dashes whiskey barrel-aged bitters (Angostura can substitute)
6 dashes celery bitters
2 bagel chips, savory flavor (onion, garlic or everything)Dry shake. Add ice and shake again. Strain into rocks of coupe glasses but do not add additional ice. Top with three pinches of “everything bagel” seasoning (if you don’t have this handy — and why would you? — any combination of coarse-ground salt, pepper, poppyseeds, sesame seeds, dried garlic and/or dried onion will work just fine).
Garnish with half a bagel chip. Serves two.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: We found it comforting and pleasing to the palate because it activated both the salt-seeking and sugar-loving taste buds in different parts of the mouth. The two whiskey infusions gave it a bready taste, and using brown sugar syrup instead of simple syrup added to the baked-goods nature of the proceedings. The celery bitters and the everything bagel sprinkle on top shout out to the drink’s New York deli roots. Melissa — decidedly not a celery person — thought it worked here. Finally, despite the “everything” topping, it was the caraway aftertaste that helped push it toward being sweet first and savory second — which was an interesting and, to our minds, pleasing sensation.
THE SEVENTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘Pop Culture Books Night’
In the late 90s, when Ted and Melissa were first dating, Ted was writing a regular column that rounded up the month’s new books about popular culture. Trouble was, he’d put it off until the night before it was due and then wait until about 11 p.m. to start, while Melissa struggled to stay awake and get him moving. This creamy-without-dairy cocktail, a late-night take on a rejuvenating cup of coffee, was inspired by those desperate days of power naps and procrastination.
When we first made this drink last year, we tried putting it over ice. But we realized that shaking it with ice first, while not adding ice to the glass, better approximated a cup of coffee and provided a colder-than-room-temperature-but-not-freezing feel that was cozier. Nevertheless, the ingredients will wake you up.
This recipe includes another home infusion, this one a chocolate-laced bourbon. Doing it couldn’t be easier. Find cacao nibs — tiny pieces of cocoa in the raw — at a specialty grocery store or online. Dump a generous amount of them in a Mason jar with a fifth of any well bourbon, wait four or five days and strain out the cacao nibs (which can then be reserved and used in, say, some very special oatmeal down the road).
Three final notes:
- One, make sure the coffee is added to the mix when it’s room temperature or cold; if it’s hot when it’s mixed in, it could cook the egg white and bring down the whole house of cards when you shake it up.
- Two, if you’re looking for an easy way to grate things for the top of your drinks, like the cacao nibs that top this drink, consider repurposing a pepper mill or other spice grinder that now comes standard with some grocery-store spices.
- Three, it’s more fun if you serve these in coffee mugs; the ones we use may or may not have been pilfered by Melissa and her sister after their final days of work at a theoretical Dunkin Donuts on, say, Long Island in, say, the mid-1980s.
‘POP CULTURE BOOKS NIGHT’
4½ oz. coffee liqueur (our local whiskey distillery, Wigle, does a nice take on this)
4½ oz. strong coffee (cold or room temperature, the darker the better; we are still going through the tasty beans we brought back from our years living in Thailand)
1½ oz. root beer liqueur or schnapps (we love a more obscure brand called Blackmaker, but anything from Dr. McGillicuddy’s to DeKuyper is just fine)
3 oz. cacao-infused bourbon
1½ oz. simple syrup
1 egg white
6 dashes mole or chocolate bitters
cacao nibs, gratedDry shake. Add ice and wet shake. Strain into coffee cups from a height of about 8 inches to ensure a foam. Garnish with grated cacao.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: Above all, it wakes you up AND gives you a pleasant feel all over. It’s creamy but with no dairy, desserty but not overwhelmingly so, and you’ll find it easy to believe that there’s no regulated substance in it whatsoever. Unlike many cocktails, which rely on being extremely cold to effectively convey their flavor, this is a sipper if you want it to be; it can approach room temperature and remain just as delicious. Finally, it can be tweaked with Starbuckian flair: Add a bit of peppermint extract to make it even more Christmasy, or throw in splash of ginger liqueur or gingerbread spice for a harvest edition. You could even use pumpkin spice here, despite the fact that its incessant spread in the past decade into all corners of American life is a sure sign of the apocalypse.
THE SIXTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: The ‘Dark Horse’
It’s high time we go dark.
The “Dark Horse,” named not after political candidates but after the complex, burnished flavors it contains, is a perfect drink with which to greet winter.
We admit that you may not have all the ingredients at hand — we promised we’d edge more into the obscure and the do-it-yourself as the days went on — but it’s a pretty straightforward libation that delivers complexity and warmth totally suitable for this, the shortest day of the year.
It includes something called “pimento dram,” which despite its name refers not to the little red things stuffed into cocktail olives but to a multilayered allspice liqueur that you’ll find at any bar worth its salt. It has echoes of nutmeg, clove and cinnamon and would be perfectly at home spiked into eggnog (or other nogs, though we’ve heard only of egg).
Also present is tamarind syrup. Tamarind is a fruit used commonly in Asia and Latin America both as a refreshing agent in drinks and as an ingredient to make foods pop with an almost savory fruitiness. If you’ve had legit pad Thai somewhere along the line, you’ve tasted tamarind. Most Asian grocery stores will have some form of tamarind or even tamarind syrup available.
Finally, we’ve used Ted’s favorite homemade Thai bitters, made from soaking fresh green peppercorns and aromatic dried orange peel in cheap Bangkok rum for a month, then straining and putting in dropper bottles. But any off-the-shelf aromatic bitters — even the old workhorse Angostura — will do just fine here.
THE ‘DARK HORSE’
2 oz. Dad’s Hat rye whiskey, finished in vermouth barrels (substitute your preferred rye as desired, but don’t use bourbon, which will upset the balance of sweetness and make the drink cloying)
¾ oz pimento dram
1½ oz. vanilla syrup
¾ oz. tamarind syrup
3 dashes peppercorn/orange peel bitters (substitute your own bitters as desired)
2 orange peels, for garnishIn a large beaker, combine ingredients with ice and stir, then strain and serve over one ice cube in a whiskey-dram glass such as a Glencairn. Garnish with orange peel after rubbing the rim of the glass with it.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: The piquancy, first of all. While certainly sweet, this is a balanced, sharp-tasting drink in which the sour of the tamarind makes your mouth pucker while the pimento dram satisfies those taste buds back in the corner of your mouth looking for more obscure sensations. The vermouth-finished rye in itself is a balance of peppery notes from the rye and gentler, sweeter vermouth aftertaste. And the syrupy consistency makes for a thick drink that should be overwhelmed by sugariness but ends up, somehow, feeling both tropical and wintry all at once.
THE FIFTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: The ‘Sour Spice’
The fifth cocktail of Christmas was made with one of Ted’s first homemade bitters recipes.
Before leaving Thailand, he wanted to capture some of the local fruits and flavors we loved but couldn’t bring home with us. So he researched bitters-making and combined some of our favorite things — northern Thai coffee and the most delicious tropical fruit we’ve ever found, ripe mangosteen — into a fermented distillation.
You can substitute another type of bitters. But if it sounds like fun, we encourage you to look at some of the bitters-making advice and books you can find online and perhaps experiment with making your own.
This drink is also made with a homemade vodka infusion. We steeped fresh tarragon and pieces of candied ginger in a basic vodka for several days to create this favorite of ours. In our previous recipes, you’ll find simple instructions for infusing spirits.
(Note: Despite the name, this drink isn’t truly sour. But the distinctive tang of ginger from two different sources and the dash of lime offer a great counterpoint to the sweetness in the syrup.)
THE ‘SOUR SPICE’
3 oz. tarragon/candied ginger-infused vodka
1½ oz. ginger liqueur (we like Domaine de Canton, and not just because the bottle is gorgeous)
1 ½ oz. simple syrup
1 oz. lime juice
6 dashes clove/Chiang Rai coffee/mangosteen bitters (or bitters of your choice)
(optional: ½ egg white)Shake first five ingredients with ice and strain into a coupe glass, then garnish with a small piece of candied ginger or a shaving of fresh ginger. (This drink can also be made with a bit of egg white for froth. In that case, dry shake and then shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass). Makes two.
(Note: the recipe card below was written for one, rather than two. But it’s way more fun to share this with someone you love.)
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: It’s all about the ginger, which comes from several sources including the bit of garnish added at the end. (The bit of candied ginger looks nice perched on the rim of the glass. But if you let it drop in once you begin enjoying the drink, it’s even better.) We love the warmth that ginger offers and the way it somehow brings all the other flavors in this drink together. There’s a holiday feeling to this cocktail, thanks to the lovely golden color and the hints of clove and tarragon.
THE FOURTH COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: `The Phipps Conservatory’
Our fourth cocktail is a concentrated celebration of the fresh, blooming feeling of springtime. It lets you revel in the brightness of citrus and the beauty of flowers at any time of year. (It’s snowing out tonight in Pennsylvania, and yet somehow this drink feels just right.)
It does involve one homemade ingredient — gin infused with dried lavender. As we described in our recipe from Day Two, the infusion process is quick and easy: Simply take a bottle of American-style gin and pour it into a large mixing bowl or large Mason jar. Add two handfuls of dried lavender flowers and allow it to steep for about two days. (The previous infusion we mentioned — gin infused with green tea — was a much quicker process because the tea leaves give up their flavor so easily. The lavender flowers need more time to impart their flavor.) Once it’s done, strain the gin into another bowl and pour back into its original bottle through a funnel.
‘THE PHIPPS CONSERVATORY’
3 oz. lavender-infused gin
1½ oz. pear vodka (lemon or other citrus vodka also works well)
½ oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur
4 dashes grapefruit bitters
the juice of one lime
1½ oz. simple syrup
one-half egg white
grated orange peelShake first six ingredients, then add ice and shake again. Strain into any glass with a stem and top with grated orange peel. If you wish, you can garnish with a tiny orange slice. Makes two.
(You may notice on the card below that we tinkered with some of the amounts after the first time we made this drink. The experimentation has been part of the fun.)
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: This drink is unabashedly floral, like the renowned Pittsburgh greenhouse that gave it its name. But too often floral drinks are either cloying and sweet or too light to be memorable. This one appeals to us because it has a citrusy kick and a powerful personality. The lavender adds just a slight medicinal undertone — we find it pleasing, though it may not be to everyone’s taste. This is a serious, substantial cocktail for an evening when you want one good drink. (Though we’re curious what this one might be like if you eliminated the egg white, added more lime juice or perhaps some orange juice, and served it in a highball glass over lots of ice on a hot summer day.)
THE THIRD COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: `Subourbon Oasis’
Our third drink in this series — connected to yesterday’s by pomegranate liqueur — is a warming bourbon-based concoction with no homemade ingredients. It’s a great choice at the holidays, and a wonderful excuse to enjoy a taste of the artfully named Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Dandelion & Burdock Bitters (made in Scotland, but available in the U.S.).
The name is partly a celebration of the peaceful acre of woods where Ted’s parents built this midcentury modern family home that we love. But like this slightly bitter/slightly sweet drink, it’s also a nod to the bittersweet reality that while this house and this city very much are our home and always will be, we also crave the energy of city streets and the surprises that far-flung villages can hold.
We hope this comforting yet surprising cocktail captures the spirit of both.
‘SUBOURBON OASIS’
3 oz. Kentucky bourbon
¾ oz. Pama pomegranate liqueur
¾ oz. ruby red grapefruit vodka
4 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Dandelion & Burdock Bitters (substitute the more easily found Peychaud’s Bitters, if you prefer)
½ oz. simple syrup (can be vanilla simple syrup, if you wish)
12 blackberries, muddled
dash of Angostura bittersStir the first five ingredients with ice in a glass beaker, then add 12 muddled blackberries and stir once more. Strain into rocks glass over one large ice cube and top with one solid dash of Angostura bitters. Makes two.
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: Sometimes we happily nerd out and dream up complex, eight-ingredient concoctions that require precise measurements. But this just-sweet-enough cocktail is built from sturdy but simple parts: One tasty base liquor, a touch of two other spirits that bring tartness and personality, a bit of syrup and fresh fruit, and a few dashes of enlivening bitters.
(We opted to go egg white-free tonight, after using that ingredient in the last two recipes. If you’re in the mood for something frothy, you could prepare this recipe using one-half an egg white and the dry shake/wet shake method we mentioned in the previous two recipes. But it has a lovely simplicity when stirred, not shaken.)
THE SECOND COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: `Afternoon Delight’
Our second installment is a drink that celebrates the complex flavors of a perfectly steeped cup of loose-leaf tea. Between her English/Irish background and six years in Asia, Melissa adores tea almost as much as she adores Ted. He created this drink for her to combine the zen pleasure of an afternoon cup of tea with the refreshing and cooling citrus bite of lime juice and gin.
It contains two ingredients you may not have on hand right now:
One is gin that Ted infused with jasmine tea. Single-ingredient infusions are a quick and easy process, especially when using something like tea leaves, and would be a good choice if you’d like to try infusing liquor for the first time. Simply take a bottle of American-style gin (we’ve had good luck with brands like Aviation or Death’s Door, which have more of a floral undertone and less juniper, unlike their drier English counterparts) and pour it into a large mixing bowl or an oversized Mason jar.
Add a couple of small handfuls of Chinese jasmine green tea and allow it to steep for up to an hour. If you want a stronger tea flavor, steep the gin for a maximum of 90 minutes (more than that and it will begin to taste too bitter). Then strain the gin into another bowl and pour back into its original bottle through a funnel.
The other uncommon ingredient is Gyokuro Tea Shochu, a spirit made from rice wine and green tea from southern Japan. If you don’t feel like buying this (though it’s a great ingredient in many possible drinks), you can infuse a neutral-tasting basic vodka or sake with Japanese green tea leaves (not jasmine).
‘AFTERNOON DELIGHT’
3 oz. jasmine tea-infused gin
1 ½ oz. Pama pomegranate liqueur
¾ oz. Gyokuro Tea Shochu
1½ oz. turbinado simple syrup
5 dashes orange bitters
⅓ oz. Key lime juice
one half egg whiteShake the seven ingredients without ice (“dry shake”), then add ice and shake again. Strain into rocks glasses over one large ice cube and top with two dashes of aromatic bitters. Makes two.
(As below, the egg white is a valuable for giving this drink its frothy, barroom texture. But our vegan friends are welcome to omit the egg white.)
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: We worked on the balance of this concoction to make sure it had the refreshing brightness of a summer drink, with a warm finish of good tea. The slight graininess of the rice wine adds a nice note of complexity, and pomegranate liqueur furnishes tartness. This is what Twisted Tea dreams about being when it grows up and lets its sweetness take a backseat to an edgier vibe.
THE FIRST COCKTAIL OF CHRISTMAS: ‘Opening Day’
We kick off our dozen drinks with a straightforward and relatively short recipe we call “Opening Day.” The ingredients are easy to find and don’t require any homemade infusions or obscure elixirs (we’ll bring more of those in as the days go by). We came up with this one on a chilly March night as we celebrated the start of the baseball season — that portentous moment when winter has yet to release its icy, gray grip, but spring and even the whisper of summer feel close enough to touch.
‘OPENING DAY’
3 oz. Cutty Sark scotch
1½ oz. limoncello
¾ oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 oz. vanilla simple syrup (regular simple syrup will do in a pinch)
one half an egg white
cacao nibs, grated (a sprinkling of cocoa powder is an acceptable, if undesired, substitute)Shake all five ingredients without ice (known as a “dry shake”), then add ice and shake again. Strain into coupe glasses and top with a sprinkling of grated cacao nibs. Makes two.
(The egg white really is valuable for giving this drink its frothy, barroom texture. And you’re actually consuming very little of it. But our vegan friends are welcome to omit the egg white and stir all of the remaining ingredients with ice, then strain into a coupe glass.)
WHY WE LIKED THIS ONE: It leverages relatively cheap (but tasty) scotch into something that feels and tastes exotic and uncommon (and relatively un-scotchlike, for those of you wary of that flavor). Try this with whatever scotch you wish, but we don’t recommend this one with bourbon or rye; the lighter nature of scotch doesn’t weigh down the liqueurs, providing a good balance.
The same motivation that led us to these drinks led Melissa to do these stories while we were living in Thailand. Check them out:
Welcome to Breadcrumbs, our publication and private storytelling service. We’re here to celebrate the stories of your life and ensure that they echo for generations to come. We work with you to elevate milestone moments, teasing out meaningful details. Using our decades of journalism experience and our creative talent, we battle the inevitable disappearance of memories that once seemed indelible. Our mission is to create permanent keepsakes in any form that suits you, from hard-cover books and personal magazines to pieces of home decor and art to one-of-a-kind projects we make or guide you through creating.
Because your story matters.
And as life races by, we will help you to preserve and celebrate it — wherever that journey may lead.
©2019, Melissa Rayworth and Ted Anthony. All rights reserved.
