Who says rum and whiskey are the only liquors that play well with mint?
At B&O American Brasserie in Baltimore, the new “Needle in a Haystack” cocktail gives good old gin the mojito treatment: Hendricks gin, Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur, mint, lemon juice, simple syrup, and soda water.
Yeah, so it’s a mouthful to say, but we’re betting you won’t mind once you find your hand-to-mouth addiction with this week’s bark.
In keeping with the theme of making the bark recipes as easy as possible, we bypassed making homemade marshmallows. Instead we used a bag of store-bought mini marshmallows and melted them ever so slightly on the stovetop, then spiked it with whiskey and poured that whiskey marshmallow layer over the chocolate.
If you’re wondering why not spike the caramel filling as well — good point — and we tried that. But it takes a lot of whiskey to edge out the strong flavor of caramel. In doing so, the caramel filling became too liquidity for a bark. So while that was a no-go for the bark, we’ll be bringing that whiskey-spiked caramel back for an upcoming recipe.
And since it seems we are never satisfied, we decided to go one step further and finish our whiskeycara-mallow with a spiced bacon crumble. Yes, spiced — that’s spiced with cayenne and black pepper.
There you have it—an ES style bark that’s equally sweet and spicy and a whole lot punchy, with all kinds of goodness.
On a tangential note, we used this Beka Bain Marie to keep the chocolate melted, warm and ready to go. Mighty handy for this series – thank you, Beka!
If you’ve read ES for, oh, 30 seconds or so, you probably know that we like cooking with booze. And no one does it better than our own bakers royale, who has found not 1, not 2, but 4 ways (so far) to turn a mudslide cocktail into a delicious dessert. Let’s take a moment to say bravo. And yum.
Chocolate cake plus buttercream frosting infused with homemande Bailey’s, chocolate and kahlua. Bet you’re sorry you said you were over cupcakes now, huh?
Take that kahlua, chocolate and Bailey’s, infuse it into some ice cream, and shape it into a cake.
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Here’s a post just for all of you who think whipped lightening is too fancy.
Apparently one of the newest trends among high schoolers this year is this stuff called Spike Your Juice. It was described to me by a former co-worker as “stuff you put in juice to make it alcoholic.” Naturally, as soon as I heard those words, instead of being appalled or horrified, I immediately ran over to my computer to figure out how I could get some of this stuff. I’m on a budget, ‘yo.
After some googling, I discovered this is supposed to taste like federweisser, some alcoholic German drink that I did not consume in Germany. When I asked my German resident expert, she said it “sounds like the stuff they give babies to get them to like beer.” Typical.
Make your own alcohol without a bathtub and the potential for blindness? Too good to be true. After gathering information and convincing the company to send me samples, I either thought this was a) a scam or b) a packet of yeast.
I poured it into a measuring spoon. It’s just yeast. But then I started to freak out about homemade alcohol horror stories. Would I die if I consumed this? Is this a terrible idea? Should I just walk down to the store and buy a $6 bottle of Jacquins?
No, no, and NO.
So I followed the directions and added one packet (contents in the picture above) to a 64oz container of cran-pomegranate juice that contained sugar. And I waited 48 hours. I tasted. It tasted like juice with yeast. So of course instead of waiting just one more day, I waited nine.
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Finally, for those of you sick of just drinking your cocktails (so cliché), I have discovered yet another way to shove booze into your bodies!
My friend Dayna and I were spending a leisurely Saturday afternoon perusing a giant liquor store (you know, just the normal weekend activities) when we stumbled upon something that simultaneously delighted and horrified us: Whipped Lightning, aka whipahol, aka whipped cream alcohol! To be clear, I’m not talking about whipped cream flavored vodka (although, full disclosure, I have treated myself to that before and it is more delicious than I would like to admit). No, this was honest-to-god whipped cream infused with booze. To be more specific, as the can informs us, infused with “grain neutral spirits with natural and artificial flavors and artificial colors.” Oh good, grain alcohol and artificial colors, the cornerstones of any healthy diet.
Why the delight and horror? Well, obviously alcoholic whipped cream is hilarious. But also, scary, because it could be a slippery slope. The world doesn’t really need to make it more convenient for us to slip some booze into our everyday activities. Regardless, we decided the good outweighed the bad, so we selected our flavor (a simple “spiced vanilla” seemed like the safest bet) and trotted on home to spend some time with our new friend.
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There is probably no cocktail with a less hardcore rep than the cosmopolitan. Not sure if it became this way because of Sex and the City or just due to bloggers making fun of it, but no self-respecting cocktail snob could ever order one with a straight face. But is that fair? Really, a cosmo is supposed to be just fresh lime (good), cranberry (not so rough-and-tumble, but not a horrible flavor either), and a ton of vodka. If made right, this shouldn’t be an embarrassing drink at all.
Urbana in Washington, D.C. is now making a cocktail that tries reclaims the cosmo, with spicy fall flavors, including ginger- and allspice-based liqueurs.
