The 12 Cocktails of Christmas, Day Seven: ‘Pop Culture Books Night’
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 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.
Previous libations in this series:
- 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 entire story and collected cocktails.
One of the schnapps (schnappses?) that’s an ingredient above was the reason an entire town was renamed. Learn more in this story from Ted, who went out to North Dakota to report it in 1998:
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.
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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.
