Canary Flip (Difford's Guide Recipe)

This is a simple and delicious dessert drink that breaks from the Flip format of whole egg, cream and nutmeg. This cocktail uses the creamy egg yolk advocaat liqueur in place of raw egg and opts for a citrus zip from lemon juice and tart sauvignon blanc.

While I've had Port and Sherry Flips in the past, this flip was probably the best for enjoying more than one. It isn't that it is less rich--there's plenty of sugar and richness there--it is just a little thinner and goes down quickly with a wine and vanilla finish. No nutmeg means that it isn't a winter spice cocktail, so it feels appropriate for dessert any time of the year.

• 2 oz. advocaat liqueur (homemade used)
• 2 oz. sauvignon blanc
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• lemon twist garnish

Combine all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon zest over the glass and drop it in. 

 

Apple & Custard

 

This is a simple idea that really hits the spot on winter nights. It stands to reason that apple flavors go great with custard in this dessert drink stand-in for the typical eggnog. 

Advocaat is a Dutch traditional egg and vanilla spirit that is sweet and creamy, even though there is no dairy added. The richness comes from egg yolks which are cooked with sugar and brandy into a stable liqueur. This recipe pairs that with distilled apple cider in the form of calvados, apple brandy or applejack. Most apple brandies, like Calvados, lose a lot of the apple flavor in distilling and aging and leave you with something that tastes like expensive brandy. Laird's Applejack 86 has enough real apple flavor to not require any apple schnapps (which taste like fresh apples, not baked apples). I avoid American schnapps because of the fake flavoring that always tastes like candy and not even close to real fruit. I've found that with Applejack 86, you don't need to add schnapps.

My homemade advocaat also has a ton of vanilla in it, so I omitted vanilla syrup from the recipe and just used a splash of simple. You can easily add vanilla extract to any simple syrup and get similar results.

• 2 oz. advocaat (homemade used)
• 1 1/2 oz. Calvados (Laird's Applejack 86 used)
• 1/2 oz. apple schnapps (omitted above)
• 1/4 oz. vanilla syrup (simple syrup used)

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. 

(Simple Times) Blueberry Lemonade Punch

My sister gave me a bottle of Blueberry Lemonade Simple Times mixer. This is awesome, especially when it comes to making a quick cocktail or punch while traveling for the holidays. You don't have time to shop for ingredients or count on someone else's bar to furnish what you need for a punch. So Simple Times is really a time saver that simplifies your mixing life.

This was a basic punch that went off really well with family members. All it took three cups of gin, three quarters of the Simple Times lemonade bottle, a liter of soda water and lemon slices. For extra garnish I made ice blocks with blueberries and cranberries frozen in them.

Irish Tea

Black tea is used in many hot winter cocktails. This makes a lot of sense, because it warms whatever liquor you use and often the flavor of the liquor provides a sweetness that makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

But what if the point of the liquor is to taste like the tea? What if it tastes so much like tea that you almost can't tell that the tea is spiked?

MurLarkey makes this really cool three tea whiskey (so new it's not on their website yet) that infuses white whiskey with Darjeeling, Earl Grey and English breakfast teas. It makes a great breakfast cocktail that goes perfectly with toast and jam. The Irish enjoy especially strong black tea, and I recommend it as the namesake of this boozy breakfast drink.

• 5 oz. hot Irish breakfast tea
• 1 oz. MurLarkey three tea whiskey
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 oz. milk (warmed)

Combine all ingredients in a teacup and stir. 

Sloe Gin Flip

This is the most festive-looking Flip I've ever made, and I had a feeling it would be. Sloe gin is a fruity gin made with sloe berry liqueur and gin. It is an old world delight native to Northern Europe and Britain where the berries--much like plums--can be found and added to spirits much like Eastern Europeans do with vodka or rakia.

The Flip is a classic colonial cocktail that is perfect for holiday drinking: it's like a more condensed and potent Eggnog because, unlike Eggnog, Flips aren't mostly milk. Flipping sloe gin is especially pretty with that pink color, but it is even more rewarding to drink. The nose of the cocktail is of nutmeg, and the mouthfeel is creamy like a dessert. But there's a fun fruity finish that comes through when you use sloe gin that you don't get from brandy or whiskey.

• 2 oz. sloe gin (Mr. Boston used)
• 1 oz. half-and-half
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 tsp. sugar
• freshly grated nutmeg

Combine all ingredients except nutmeg in a shaker with ice. Shake to chill and strain out the ice. Return the liquid to the shaker and shake again (dry shake) for body and pour into a small white wine glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

Alexander's Sister

It was bound to happen. The creamy Alexander cocktail needed a spin-off dessert drink with mint flavor. The good news is that this gin drink, which is usually great to enjoy in the winter months, is even more festive with creme de menthe.

Juniper in gin and mint make for an amazing holiday cocktail to be enjoyed with cookies. A good creme de menthe makes all the difference. I like it with higher proof stuff. So if you are shopping and see a 15-percent alcohol creme de menthe, pass it up and get one closer to 40-percent. It keeps the drink drier and less cloying.

The recipe says to use either the green or the white creme de menthe, but if you have green and it's almost Christmas, then flaunt it.

• 1 1/2 oz. gin (Filibuster dual cask used)
• 1 oz. green or white creme de menthe (Dekuyper green used)
• 1 oz. half-and-half
• freshly grated nutmeg

Combine liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg. 

Three Tea Whiskey Fix

It's not enough to call this drink a Sour. It breaks off of the Sour family early on and sits somewhere more tropical with tea syrup and MurLarkey Three Tea Whiskey. This is a bit of a preview of MurLarkey's newest product that I can tell will be a handy tool in the craft bartending scene in Virginia. Three Tea Whiskey is made from infusing their white whiskey with Darjeeling, English Breakfast, and Earl Grey teas. It has a strong, earthy, and in the case of Earl Gray, floral scent that adds so much to a drink.

I thought a simple drink would then be to sweeten a basic Sour or Fix with MurLarkey whiskies with a black tea and demerara sugar syrup. See how to make this on my Swedish Punsch recipe page. 
The rest of the recipe follows:

• 1 1/2 oz. whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 1/2 oz. MurLarkey Three Tea Whiskey 
• 1/2 oz. black tea and demerara sugar syrup 
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• orange and lemon twists and a maraschino cherry garnishes

Combine all ingredients except garnishes in a shaker with ice. Shake and pour into an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with fruit peels and maraschino cherry.

Hot Swedish Punsch

This hot black tea cocktail is perfect for winter with its clove and cardamon spices and exotic rums. Swedish Punsch is a Scandanavian treat that was once available commercially worldwide, but now can only be found in its home country. The Hot Punsch is simply that, heating and serving the liquor hot. But if you have to make this drink from scratch as I did, there are a lot more steps to it than that. You'll need Batavia Arrack.

Batavia Arrack is one of the main ingredients in many punches of yesteryear. It is difficult to come by, but it is finding its way back to prominence with the cocktail and punch fad of late. Once you have it and some gold rum you can make the recipe that I posted a while back.

Now it is simply a matter of heating the entire punch and serving it in warm mugs with a lemon slice garnish. I did a nifty clove studded lemon slice that worked out nicely.

Coffee Eggnog

This is my final Eggnog post of the New York Bartender's Guide. It may be my final Eggnog post of the year. That has yet to be seen. As it stands I've done all of the other Eggnog drinks on the list, and I have to say that I think this is better than most, particularly the ones that use brandy, sherry, or cider. I guess I'm just partial to coffee. And there is something to that feeling that you are getting your coffee with your liquor in this holiday drink. That and the fact that this cocktail is blended for extra fluffiness, and you have your cold Coffee Eggnog Latte right here.

The original recipe calls for instant coffee. That seems a little basic nowadays, but I can see the logic. A coffee liqueur back in the 90s didn't have the real coffee taste of cold brew coffee. It would be mostly rum and sugar, so adding instant coffee would just accentuate the real coffee flavor. But you are blending this drink, so there's no harm in using a pinch of real coffee. Better still, substitute MurLarkey Coffee Whiskey for the coffee liqueur, and you will have an all-whiskey Eggnog that tastes more like real coffee. Nothing else needs to change in this recipe except that you can add more sugar syrup to taste.

• 2 oz. blended whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 1 oz. coffee liqueur (MurLarkey Coffee Whiskey used)
• 6 oz. milk
• 1 oz. half-and-half
• 1 tsp. sugar syurp
• 1/2 tsp. instant coffee (or fine ground coffee as I did)
• 1 egg
• ground nutmeg

Combine all ingredients except nutmeg in a blender with ice. Blend until smooth and pour into a chilled Collins glass. Sprinkle nutmeg on top. 

Nutcracker

Creme de Noyaux is an important part of making the Nutcracker nutty. It is made with almonds, stone fruit pits, and herbs and is more bitter than amaretto. I am using Tempus Fugit's excellent Creme de Noyaux, which is great to sip by itself--something you can't say about those bargain cremes.

The other ingredient the recipe calls for is coconut amaretto. I'm not sure that this spirit ever existed, or if it did, it was a limited run. My guess is that the New York Bartender's Guide includes this drink as a way to showcase liquors that existed at some time in the past, but I doubt that you'll find a commercially available coconut amaretto now.

So to make it I used cream of coconut, vodka and amaretto. (Note: I really only made enough coconut amaretto for one cocktail, but the basic process and proportions should hold true for a larger batch if you wish to make it.) I especially liked how this homemade spirit was reminiscent of amaretto but with a cloudy white color and coconut sweetness. Put one part coconut cream in a jar and add an equal part of vodka to it. Add several dashes of amaretto to the mixture, seal the jar and shake it until the coconut is suspended. Store it in the refrigerator for a few hours and the thicker, white and fatty parts of the coconut will float to the surface, leaving a cloudy coconut vodka underneath. Skim off the white coconut fat and you have a coconut amaretto underneath!

The cocktail itself is much simpler to make.

• 2 oz. coconut amaretto
• 2 oz. creme de Noyaux (Tempus Fugit used)
• 2 oz. half-and-half

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. 

Port Milk Punch

Another winter cocktail in the vein of "everything can be made into a Milk Punch" category. Port makes for a very sweet Milk Punch and its rich grape nature lends itself well to a holiday spiced milk. It isn't as strong as brandy, bourbon, whiskey and gin.

You'll want to up the dusting of nutmeg on top if you like stronger tasting milk punch. The heat of the ground nutmeg really does a lot to give the drink that swooning winter spice warmth that you are looking for from the liquor, but which it doesn't always provide.

• 3 oz. ruby port (Sandeman used)
• 1 cup or 8 oz. of milk
• 1 tsp. sugar
• grated nutmeg

Combine all ingredients except nutmeg in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled Collins glass. Grate nutmeg on top. 

Mulled Wine

A tradition in the British Isles, a hot Mulled Wine is part of any Anglo holiday celebration. This drink is pretty much a hot punch with wine being the main ingredient, but port, brandy, and honey are there for sweetness and the selection of spices is there for flavoring.

• 6 oz. dry red wine (Ravens Wood zinfandel used)
• 1 oz. ruby port
• 1 oz. brandy
• 1 cinnamon stick
• grated nutmeg to taste
• 3 cloves
• lemon twist

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Warm, do not boil, while stirring and pour into a warm coffee mug.