The 12 Cocktails of Christmas, Day One: The ‘Opening Day’
Recipes inspired by global craft cocktail culture, shared this holiday season by Melissa Rayworth and Ted Anthony.
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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’ll continue updating the top drink each day until we’ve reached a dozen (yes, we’ll get done right after Christmas, but our schedules have been pretty crazed with new job adventures, current job obligations, two teenagers, two cats — the list, just like yours, goes on).
Hope this brings you all some holiday cheer. Please do share these recipes with your friends and family, and please take a moment this year 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,
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
1.5 oz. limoncello
.75 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:
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©2019, Melissa Rayworth and Ted Anthony. All rights reserved.
