food stuff: cooling hot beverages

today is the first day in about a month that i have had to wear a jacket to work here in northern california. it's sad. and to that extent, i was thinking about how i need to drink some more hot beverages this week - i love me some tea. but, whenever i drink tea, i always have to wait a half hour or an hour for it to cool down enough for me to handle it. that is, until i read this article at the kitchen which details the best ways to cool a hot beverage. it's great! how do you prefer to cool your beverages?

Trail Mix Muffins and Sloe Gin

In preparation for a late-winter snowstorm (and we former scouts have learned to always be prepared), we holed ourselves up with some Trail Mix Muffins, a hike-worthy muffin variation from Baking Bites. It's a different flavor than some of the more ordinary muffins.

Trail Mix Muffins (yields 24)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats (plain oatmeal)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt
2 large eggs

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups trail mix

*You can use any kind of trail mix you want, so we used a combination of three.  That means our muffins are full of peanuts, almonds, cashews, cranberries, raisins, golden raisins, chocolate chips, yogurt chips, and sunflower seeds.  It's a mouthful, but we like being inclusive.  Coconut would also be pretty delicious here.

Preheat oven to 400F. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners. 
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
 In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract.  Pour into dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Stir in trail mix.
 Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups. Each cup will be about 3/4 full.
 Bake for 15 minutes, or until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of each comes out clean.
 Cool on a wire rack.

These would be perfect to make for a quick breakfast treat, since we usually have most of these ingredients in our kitchens anyway.  They're extremely unique, with a different flavor in every bite, and we really like that.  Even the sunflower seeds don't get lost in the taste.  It's a little like eating bird food, and we mean that in the best way possible. 

If by some chance we can't finish all of these before they get stale, we're all set to turn them into muffin biscotti, also courtesy of Baking Bites.

(We meant to illustrate how the muffin explodes with Trail Mix flavor, but doesn't it just look like it threw up?)

While we were baking, outside the apartment the snow started falling for what we'd been warned would be New York's worst storm of the winter. Sloe Gin Fizzes may not seem apropos for a blizzard, but Shake would disagree. A few years ago, before the cocktail obsession, he waited out a storm at a Park Slope bar with a friend, drinking what the bartender had testified were "Sloe Gin Fizzes" -- a highball made of gin, Rose's Lime juice, and soda. They were good drinks (more like a Rickey) to have while contemplating the white streets outside, but nothing like a real Sloe Gin Fizz. Unlike regular gin, flavored with juniper and other herbs, sloe gin is a liqueur flavored with sloe (blackthorn) plums. With the snow coming down outside, it seemed like a good opportunity to correct that old error.  

We picked up a bottle of Plymouth Sloe Gin at the closing of the beloved Red Hook liquor store LeNell's. The first thing to try, of course, was the true Sloe Gin Fizz: combine 1 1/2 oz of sloe gin, 1 oz lemon juice, and 1 tsp sugar. Shake with ice and strain in a highball glass (or a mason jar, if you're classy). Fill with ice and soda. 

This goes down like a Jones Soda on a summer -- er, blustery March -- day.  Very light and sweet, it could almost be a brunch drink. The low alcohol content -- just 52 proof, not the usual 80+ of most spirits -- means you could be looking into a very long brunch.

The Sloe Gin Cocktail is just the opposite -- sweet and thick, with more of an alcoholic taste.  The taste isn't bad in and of itself, but the drink overall seems a bit like cough syrup.  If you've got a scratch in your throat and want to try it: 2 1/4 oz sloe gin, 1/4 oz dry vermouth, dash orange bitters, stirred with ice and strained into a cocktail glass.

Similar but better is the Tip Toe Cocktail, which is helped by a bit of lemon juice.  Mix 1 1/2 oz sloe gin, 1/2 oz dry vermouth, 1/2 oz lemon juice with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Oscar cookies

We scoured cookbooks for days trying to find a nice, elegant-looking cookie appropriate for an Oscar party. The fare in The Art of the Dessert was too intense for a night of watching TV; the morsels in our easy cookie book, too simple. So we took it upon ourselves to combine two elements from our old standby, The Weekend Baker. The cookies are an easy standalone recipe and the glaze is from the Chocolate-Dipped Macadamia Brittle therein (but that's another post). The result is a cookie that takes no time at all and tastes as nice as it looks.

Toasted Almond Cookies
12 tbsp unsalted butter (at room temperature)
1/2 c sugar
pinch of salt
1 yolk from a large egg
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and toast the almonds -- spread them in 1 layer on a baking sheet and bake until fragrant and just turning brown, around 8 min. Be careful, because they'll keep toasting even when you remove them. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, and salt on medium until well blended. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and almond extract and beat until combined. Pour in the flour and almonds and beat on low until the dough clumps together and looks like, well, dough.

3. Spoon these in little balls onto prepared baking sheet, about 1 1/2 inches apart. Press down with your fingers to flatten them a bit and bake one sheet at a time, about 17 minutes (until the edges are golden and the tops are dry). Place the sheet on a rack and let them cool for about 10 minutes.


Chocolate Glaze
3 oz semi-sweet baker's chocolate, chopped
3 tbsp butter
(if you want them really chocolatey, up each of these to four)

1. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler (aka, a metal bowl on top of a pot of boiling water) or the microwave, if you're feeling less fancy. Microwave for about 15 seconds at a time and then stir so the chocolate doesn't burn. You'll only need to do this for about 30 seconds.

2. Dip half of a cookie into the chocolate and place on wax paper or parchment. Let these set -- they'll go faster and be less likely to melt if you put them in the fridge. Sift some powdered sugar on top for a finished look.

Drink-wise, we wanted to try some variation on the Champagne Cocktail. Champagne seems like the obvious choice for an Oscars party, but when you're tightening your budget and opting for $5 bottles of Andre you need to add something extra to spruce up the drink. We opted for the Chicago Cocktail --well, something like it. We skipped the Angostura bitters and didn't have any orange bitters on hand, which would have been perfect. Instead we measured 2 parts cognac to 1 part orange curacao, added champagne. and called it a night.

And by "called it a night" we mean "Who won Best Picture again?"

Ice-tini

I flew across the country for a drink that one would assume had gone out of fashion fifteen years ago. That dimly lit thing is a martini served in a glass made of ice—hoisted up by a glass base that prevents it from melting all over the table—and the first and only place I have encountered it at Barbacoa in Boise, Idaho. An ice-tini is like drinking salty nectar encased in anesthesia. The booze just sort of appears in your mouth without you having ever felt it pass your lips. I highly recommend it, but what I'd really like is to figure out how to make one at home . . .

Winter foods and winter booze

After a few weeks of holiday gluttony, we decided to skip the baking this week and go with a soup. Of course, this simple pasta e fagioli from this Rao’s cookbook is probably of questionable health value. But it’s still winter outside, so it’s a start.

Ingredients

½ pound ditalini pasta (we couldn’t find ditalini, even at the Italian deli, so we went with fusilli)2 19-oz cans cannelloni beans, undrained
¼ c olive oil
2 minced garlic cloves½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
½ c reserved pasta water
grated Pecorino Romano cheese
extra virgin olive oil

Cook pasta, as always, in salted water. Meanwhile, puree 1 can of the beans and set aside. Heat the oil in a pot, then add the garlic and sauté until slightly golden. Add the pureed beans, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, add the second can of beans, and let simmer until the pasta is done. Then drain the pasta, but keep ½ cup of the water. Add that water and the pasta to the beans and stir. Serve it up, drizzle with olive oil and top with grated cheese.

This is a pretty basic soup and simple to make, but very filling and can easily be a meal instead of an appetizer. There’s a lot of flavor here, probably because everything is cooked with garlic olive oil. It’s good as-is, but we’re considering adding sausage next time.

Drinkwise, we also wanted something to warm us up after the weekend snowstorm. So we decided to stick with the Italian theme and try Italian Tea a.k.a. the Skier’s Smoothie. It’s a pretty basic drink, just a shot of Galliano, hot tea, and lemon as desired. It doesn’t make sense to call this drink Italian Tea, since our bottle of this Italian-made liqueur bears a label saying “Product of France.” But given that we also used the British tea PG Tips, this is really a multinational brew.

We’ve had Galliano ever since an attempt to try Harvey Wallbangers (about which the less said, the better) about a year ago, and never really found a drink we liked with this herbal liqueur. But it’s perfect when combined with a strong black tea and a slice of lemon. Simple, but the Skier’s Smoothie a good choice when you’re not in the mood for an Irish coffee.

kitchen katastrophe: vin chaud and puppy chow

each year, my extended family gets together to celebrate christmas. in a new twist this year, everyone was asked to bring something to eat or drink - a christmas potluck, if you will. my aunt (hosting the event) agreed to take care of the turkey and main dishes with the family (28 of us in total) bringing appetizers, desserts, deliciously drinkable alcoholic drinks, etc. my original goal was to make the ULTIMATE christmas dessert: the buche de noel. this might just be the most complicated thing i have ever heard of. i chickened out at the last minute. instead, i opted to get my family drunk with vin chaud (hot wine, direct french translation) or as we know it in the US, mulled wine, and feed them with puppy chow.

i was at the grocery store when i made my decision and having only ever made vin chaud one other time, did not know a recipe off the top of my head. so, i called my dear friend, JaBootaay, who happily looked up a random vin chaud recipe online and read me the ingredients. this was chosen for a number of reasons: 1) easily found online and 2) not a ton of ingredients. so, here is the very basic mulled wine recipe:

Mulled Wine (Vin Chaud)
Ingredients

• 2 (750 ml) bottles merlot
• 3 cups orange juice, freshly squeezed
• 3 cups pineapple juice
• 1 1/2 cups lemon juice, freshly squeezed
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 36 whole cloves
• 4 cinnamon sticks
• 3/4 cup water

Directions

1. In a large stainless steel stockpot, combine all ingredients.
2. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer.
3. Reduce heat to very low and keep warm for about 30 minutes to let the flavours blend.
4. Strain out the cloves and the cinnamon before serving.
5. Ladle in to heatproof cups.

sounds easy, right? in fact, it wasn't too bad. a few things, though: i only had one bottle of merlot on hand, so i combined it with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. i have always heard that if you have a bottle of red wine you don't like, make mulled wine to mask the taste. i think this is still true. in addition, it's kind of hard to find nice, squeezable oranges at this time of year in north dakota, so i used 100% pure orange juice and lemon juice from a bottle.
JaBootaay suggested i use north dakota snow as water, but it took too long to melt, so i just used tap water (drinkable here, no one uses brita). the only other issue i had with this was the transporting of it. we filled two thermoses (thermi?) and brought the rest in a slow cooker. it went fast, so it almost wasn't worth it. if you're making this for a party of 8+ people, you could easily double the recipe.
apologies, i forgot my camera at home, so i don't have a final picture in a glass. but pretty much it looked like above. but in a glass. mmmmm...

in addition, one of my brothers made puppy chow - this is a great meal that almost everyone likes.

Puppy Chow
Ingredients

• 9 cups Corn Chex® cereal
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions

1. Into large bowl, measure cereal; set aside.
2. In a pot, melt chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter until smooth.
3. Stir in vanilla.
4. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated.
5. Pour into paper bag.
6. Add powdered sugar. Close bag; shake until well coated.

you may notice that the above recipe is slightly altered from that on the chex website. this is because my mom cut out the chex mix recipe from about 15-20 years ago to put into her recipe box and that is the actual recipe we use - no microwaving here (although i am sure it would work), but i wanted to give the good folks at chex their claim to the recipe.

so you can measure your success, here is our melting on the oven:
then we poured the completely smooth (not burnt - be sure not to melt at too high a temperature, this will entail lots of stirring and monitoring) over the cereal in a turkey roaster, quite appropriate.
this allowed us to shake the mix, rather than stir it. i feel this gives it a better coating.
finally, we pour the chocolatey cereal into a brown paper bag with powdered sugar as below.
then shake it like a polaroid picture. you can put into the fridge or walk-in cooler to harden and then enjoy. again, no final pictures, although you can click on the puppy chow wiki link above to see a nice picture. the powdered sugar is important. i once lugged a huge box of chex all the way to europe to make this for my friends. catch was, they don't have powdered sugar in france (that we could find), so we used regular sugar to coat. no go. it was horrible and everyone thought i was crazy for even liking the idea of this meal. anyway, made properly, this is enjoyed by everyone! AND this, combined with the wine, is a fully-balanced meal: carbs, dairy, fruits, alcohol, and chocolate!

since it's the holidays, i believe the kitchen gods have smiled down on me in making a fabulous few meals for my family: no huge katastrophe here. however, there are still a few things one can learn:

1. bring a camera to all family events.
2. no matter what, you will always underestimate the alcoholic needs of family members when forced to spend 6 hours together.
3. this type of puppy chow is NOT for dogs unless you want to clean up you-know-what...
   

Pumpkin Pie Jello Shots

For a pot-luck party we decided to save time and combine the dessert and the cocktail together. Though most of us equate "Jell-O Shots" with "Fraternity Hazing" these are much more adult. Of course, no one ever said adults don't do shots...

Pumpkin Pie Jell-O Shots

from Tasting Table

1 or 2 Crumbled Graham crackers
1 envelope Knox gelatin
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of ground nutmeg
1/2 cup vodka
1/2 tablespoon cold heavy cream
Fresh whipped cream, for serving

1. Arrange the mini cupcake cups on a baking sheet. Place 1 cup cold water in the top of a double boiler and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Let stand for three minutes.
2. Heat the gelatin mixture over a gentle simmer until the granules have dissolved. Add the pumpkin, sugar and spices and heat, stirring occasionally, until the pumpkin and sugar are completely melted. Remove from heat and cool for 30 minutes.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the vodka with 1/4 cup cold water and the heavy cream. Whisk in the pumpkin mixture and immediately divide it among the cupcake cups. Chill until firm, at least 4 hours. Sprinkle each with crumbled Graham crackers, top with whipped cream and serve.

Cinnamon Rolls, Eau de Vie and Limoncello

We're big fans of breakfast for dinner, so tonight we opted for cinnamon rolls. These come from Cook's Illustrated, so you know they're perfect.

Filling:

3/4 c packed dark brown sugar

1/4 c granulated sugar

2 tbsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp salt

1 tbsp butter, melted

Dough:

2 1/2 c flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 c buttermilk

6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled

Since you're going to use 8 tbsp of butter anyway, melt a whole stick now and take out one spoon at a time whenever you need it. Preheat the oven to 425 and move a rack to the upper middle position. Coat a round cake pan with 1 tbsp melted butter.

For the filling: Combine sugars, spices, and salt in a small bowl. Add 1 tbsp butter and stir with a fork until it all looks like wet sand. Set aside.

For the dough: whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Separately, whisk the buttermilk and 2 tbsp butter in a measuring cup. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and stir until liquid is absorbed (about 30 sec). Transfer to a floured surface and knead until soft.

Pat the dough with your hands into a 9 x 12 inch rectangle. Brush the dough with 2 tbsp of butter and top with the filling*, leaving a 1/2-inch border of dough around the edges. Pat the filling lightly into the dough. Roll the dough from the long side up, pressing lightly, to form a log and pinch the seam to seal.

Cut into pieces (the book suggests 8, but ours were a little narrow so we cut more, smaller slices), dust them with the remaining 2 tbsp of butter and fit into prepared cake pan. Bake for 23-25 min. Cool and enjoy.

There is a recipe for icing with cream cheese, buttermilk, and powdered sugar, but we skipped it. These don't need to be any sweeter than they already are, but you can dust a little powdered sugar or whipped cream over the top.

These cinnamon rolls were great, but the standout of our evening was long-form vodka preparation. Tonight was the fateful night that our months of toiling came to fruition (pun intended) in the form of limoncello.

This drink probably takes longer than anything else we've made. But it's worth it. Like K + J's apple and cinnamon infused vodka, it takes fairly basic vodka and makes it something much more amazing. The only problem is that once you taste it you realize you haven't made enough.

Limoncello is an Italian, lemon-flavored liqueur. To make it yourself, first buy some 100-proof Vodka (we used Smirnoff, just because it's what we found first). Then peel the skins off 10 lemons per bottle (we made two bottles). Be careful to only peel off only the yellow skin, and not the white pith beneath, which will make your liqueur bitter (it is basically impossible to avoid all pith, but keep it in mind). Take all these peels and stuff them into the bottle of vodka.

Now here's the hard part: take these bottles of vividly colored liquor and hide them away for 2 to 3 months. This is a long time, we admit. But it's worth it.

At the end of your dry period, open the bottle up and take a whiff. It should smell great, a lot like a lemonhead candy. Pour the liquid into a bowl.

Because neither lemons nor high-proof alcohol are sweet, you're going to want to add some simple syrup. Dissolve some sugar (demerara, preferably) into an equal amount of water on the stove and then let it cool. Add the simple syrup to the raw limoncello, tasting constantly (as if you weren't already) until it has achieved the right amount of sweetness. We used less than a cup of simple syrup for each bottle. The darker color comes from the Demerara sugar, so if you're planning to give this drink as a gift then you should use white sugar to keep the color bright yellow.

Traditionally, limoncello is served as an ice cold shot. But we shook it up with ice and added a cherry. It would also go great with a little club soda or sparkling water.

Now, originally we hadn't planned on making eau de vie. The term refers to almost any fruit-infused brandy. Since we used vodka ours wasn't technically a true eau de vie, but we don't think anyone drinking it will complain.

When you make the limoncello, the lemon peels are going to displace some of the vodka, which you'll have to pour out. Have another glass container handy, and just pour this extra alcohol over a few sliced pieces of fruit (including the skins). We used plums.

After six weeks (or two months, if you're forgetful like we are) you can add more simple syrup to taste. For us, at least, we didn't end up adding any sugar, and we ended up with a sweet, fragrant liquor.

*We forgot to brush the dough with butter before adding the filling, but all that happened is that a tiny bit more filling fell out than it otherwise would have. No matter, it caramelized on the bottom of the pan, so a couple of our rolls were on a crunchy bed of something like cinnamon rock candy - awesome.

Riesling ice cream and wine coolers

Wine Month – Riesling

We tried out Fritz Windisch Selzer Osterberg 2006 Riesling. It’s a very sweet, florid and fruity Riesling with notes of honey, sweeter than many of the others that we’ve had previously. However, we only learned this after drinking it; the purchase was made solely because the label looks the most German.

German wine doesn't get a whole lot of play, so we feel compelled to give a shout out to Gewürztraminer, another sweet white, mostly because it's fun to say (ge-VURTZ-tra-mee-ner).

We're big fans of the Wine Cellar sorbets (thought not the $8+ per pint price tag), so when we found this recipe for Riesling ice cream it seemed like the perfect desert with which to celebrate wine month. Riesling ice cream sounds like it should be difficult, but in actuality only has a few ingredients and the prep goes pretty quickly. We used this recipe from Epicurious but opted out of the anise cookies, because anise is gross.

• 1 1/2 cups cream
  
• 1/2 cup half and half
  
• 2/3 cup sugar
  
• 4 large egg yolks
  
• 1 cup late harvest Riesling wine

Bring 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup half and half to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk sugar and yolks in medium bowl to blend. Whisk in hot cream mixture. Return mixture to saucepan; stir over medium-low heat until custard thickens and leaves path on back of spoon when finger is drawn across, about 4 minutes, do not boil. Strain into bowl. Mix in wine and 1 cup cream. Chill custard until cold.

Process custard in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to covered container (ice cream will be soft) and freeze. (Can be prepared 1 week ahead.)

After trying this, we realized that we should just make our own frozen wine treats and save the money. The ice cream is great - sweet and very creamy, much more so than the Wine Cellar sorbet. It tastes strongly of the Riesling (in a good way) and keeps the fruitiness of the wine, with a buttery aftertaste. A little sprinkle of cinnamon is a nice compliment.

In addition to making a wine ice cream, we tried some cocktails too. If this wine seemed easy to sip on its own, in a mixed drink it became downright gulpable.

The first drink we tried was like juice for adults. It’s called the Hot Springs:

• 1 ½ oz wine
  
• 1/2 oz pineapple juice
  
• ¼ oz maraschino liqueur
  
• dash orange bitters

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. We added a maraschino cherry.

This drink was gone in the blink of an eye. The usual cocktail packs a few ounces of high-proof spirits that slows most tipplers down. But the Hot Springs is sweet and simple as a country lass, and just as easy:

The second drink we tried was also easy but not nearly so tasty. We tried making our own White Wine Cooler. Just dissolve ½ tsp of superfine sugar in soda, add wine and ice. This drink could also be called Blasé Blanc. Watered down, sweet, and fizzy, we could bottle this up and sell it to teenagers. Hm, without Zima there is a hole in the market…

apple & cinnamon infused vodka

We have found the best low budget xmas presents around! My lady friend and I are infusing our own vodka and giving it away for Christmas to our friends and family. We are in the experimental stage but our first attempt at apple and cinnamon was a big hit.

This is a simple recipe which took us 7 days.






















Day 1-3:

1. Take a glass jar (never plastic)
2. Add 1 cup of vodka (I used Svedka b/c its cheap and triple distilled)
3. Chop up one Macintosh apple and leave in the vodka for 3 days

Day 4-7:

1. After 3 days take out the old apple and put in a new chopped apple
2. Add to this one cinnamon stick.

Day 8:
Strain out the apples and cinnamon and you have your own apple cinnamon infused vokda! There are many different drinks you can mix up but this vodka was so smooth and sweet that we sipped it over ice.

Poor Man's Mimosa

Poor Man's Mimosa

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle of white wine (stay away from buttery or creamy Chardonnay's)
  
• 1 1/2 cups orange juice
• 1/2 cup sparkling water
• fresh mint for garnish
  

Directions:

1. pour wine into carafe
2. stir in one cup of the orange juice and all of the sparkling water
3. taste and if still is heavy on the wine taste add remaining orange juice
4. serve in tumbler and garnish with fresh mint

Commentary:
I first discovered this a few years ago when I was still living on campus at NU. I wanted some OJ and had some leftover wine. I wasnt until my last international flight that I reintroduced myself to this drink. I got some looks from the flight attendant when I ordered it but those looks faded away with my first sip....yummy. Add a splash of strawberry nectar for a great summery taste. I hope you enjoy!

Homemade Iced Tea

Sunday is a big food prep day for me. I also usually brew a big batch if iced tea to last me through the week. The process is so easy and the final result is much more delicious than what you would get from any powdered mix!

I generally make a simple batch with red or black tea, some lemons, and sugar, but this can be customized... try it with green tea, raspberry tea, or adding honey.

Bring a big pot of water to a boil. Pop in some tea bags (I use 12-15 depending on my mood) and let steep for around 10 minutes. Remove the tea bags and squeeze in the juice of the lemons.

Add sugar to taste (I use around 2 ounces), mix, pour into a large jug, and chill. Depending on how much I brew or how many tea bags I use, I occasionally dilute the iced tea with some more water, but certainly anything goes depending on how you take your tea!

CAPE BUNNERS

So I don’t know if this is really the way to do it, but it’s how we do it.

• 1 Cup o’ Vodka
• 2 Cups o’ Cran Juice
• 3- 5 TBS Lemon Juice.

Dump in a pitcher with ice and enjoy.

Sweet Potato Cheesecake and Cider Drinks

We wanted to test this recipe for super-secret professional reasons, and also because it sounds delicious.

Baking lore attests that cheesecakes are too difficult a dessert to make, so most people don’t attempt them. We scoff at baking lore. Continuing with our festive shake & bake endeavors, we tackled this autumnal cheesecake without reservations. It’s surprisingly simple and the crust is made with ginger snaps, which is the biggest draw with this cheesecake. In fact, when we told people what we were baking a Sweet Potato Cheesecake we were met with approving nods, as soon as we explained the crust the response turned to envious moans.

In the interest of time we opted for store-bought ginger snaps, which work perfectly, though if we were making this for a party we would probably make our own cookies. Then again, we could say we made our own and no one would really know; they’re all smashed and smothered in butter anyway.

Sweet Potato Cheesecake

ingredients

Crust:

• 1 ½ cups crushed gingersnaps
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Cake:

• 3 8-oz. packages cream cheese
• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ cup light brown sugar
• 1 ¾ cups sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed (approx. one large potato)
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

Topping:

• 2 cups regular sour cream
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Crust: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine crumbled cookies, sugar, and butter and press into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Press onto the bottom and 1 inch up the sides. Bake at 350 degrees for 7. (Be sure to put the springform pan into a larger baking dish, because if it leaks you’ll set off the smoke alarm.)

2. Filling: combine the cream cheese and the sugars in a large bowl, then whisk in the sweet potato, eggs, and milk. Then add cornstarch and nutmeg. (We used an electric handmixer to make this all consistently mixed.) Pour the filling into the crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until the edge is set.

3. Topping: Combine the sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. Spread over the warm cheesecake. The topping will begin to melt once you put it on the hot cake, so you’ll want to be speedy about this. Return to the oven, still at 350 degrees, for 5 minutes.

On chilling and impatience:
Cool on a rack, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Cake will continue to cook and set while chilling.

If you’re like us, you want to eat cheesecake right now, and you regret that you began making this after 7:30 pm. You will do each step simultaneously and with lightning speed, at no cost to the texture or flavor of the dessert. This makes for a food coma-inducing midnight snack, and so we chilled for about 2 ½ hours.

Remove sides of pan and serve.

As for the drinks, we decided to stick with the Fall theme. It’s not cold enough for hot toddies or mulled wine yet, though, so we thought about trying a beer-cocktail. “Do those exist?” You ask. “No,” we answer, after a fruitless search. The full spectrum of beer cocktails involves dumping a shot of some liquor into a glass of beer. The outliers are the Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne) and the Shandy (beer and lemon soda) but those aren’t exactly challenging.So instead, we decided to try some cider cocktails. This time our investigation bore fruit (ba-dum-dum). So we selected a few ciders from the local gourmet beer store Bierkraft to test out these drinks.

We bought five brands of cider:

Aspall Organic English Draft Cider: It didn’t take long to realize this award-winning cider shouldn’t be wasted in a mix, so it went straight back in the fridge.
Doc’s Draft Hard Apple Cider: “The Great American Drink" Not the internationally-renowned

cider of Aspall, but the one is large enough that we realized we’d be “bobbing for apples” if we tried to drink this one as well as the others.
Harpoon Cider: Very sweet, with a strong apple flavor.
Original Sin Cider: Drier and more tart, like beer.

Magners Irish Cider: Tastes like a milder, perhaps watered-down version of the previous two. That may be why Magner’s never gets us drunk.

On to the drinks!

DEVON GIN

This recipe comes from The Ultimate Book of Cocktails, a large-format book that came as a Christmas gift. (Less info here on Amazon). Though it doesn’t exactly possess the authority of the New York Bartender’s Guide, it is written by Stuart Walton author of Out of It, a Cultural History of Intoxication and, less promisingly, A Natural History of Human Emotions.

The measurements are unusual in this, because the recipe calls for measuring spoons instead of jiggers. We haven’t measured gin in a teaspoon since we babysat.

In rocks glass:

• 3 parts 4 ½ tbsp sweet cider (we used Harpoon)
• ¾ part 3 tsp gin
• ¼ part 1 tsp Cointreau

With ice in glass, stir in cider and gin. Float Cointreau atop.

This recipe ends up being much smaller than expected, so we doubled it to make a reasonable cocktail. No matter how sweet the Harpoon is, this is really just a gin drink with a bit of fruity carbonation. Bake has never really liked gin (whereas Shake likes the promise than gin will remind you that you drank it the next morning) and this drink didn’t exactly convert her.

But don’t worry, there are plenty of variations. There is actually a drink on the online Cocktail Database called the Devonia Cocktail, served without ice, with more gin and substituting orange bitters for Cointreau. This may not qualify as a variation -- neither source references the other -- but it’s awfully similar in name and ingredients.

If you have orange bitters on hand it’s probably worth experimenting. To make orange bitters, see here. This is actually a very simple recipe compared to others online. We’ve made it and the bitters are delicious. Bitter is a misnomer, really. Add a few cloves to this recipe if you have them.

Another similar mix to the Devon and Devonia, also from the online Cocktail Database, is the Palisades Cocktail. It's the same as the Devonia but replaces Orange bitters with aromatic – Angostura, usually – bitters. If you have Angostura, then go ahead and try it. But if you make orange bitters you will never want to bother with plain old Angostura again. Why eat chicken when you can have steak?

No matter what you add, whether Cointreau, orange bitters, or Angostura, gin owns this drink. We ended up adding a bit more cider to the Devon to cut the gin taste and keep us sober enough to enough on to embark on our next cocktail:

CIDER NECTAR

• ½ oz brandy
• ¼ oz lemon juice (1/2 oz is approx. ½ a lemon)
• ¼ tsp sugar (superfine a.k.a. "bar")

Stir into a glass of ice (put ice in after you dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice –ice will prevent dissolving). Fill rest with cider. Original Sin is a good choice for this, because with the sugar and lemon it doesn’t need any more sweetness (when we drank a second round with Magner's you almost couldn't taste the rest of the drink).

Our attempt at a Fall cocktail become more of a refreshing Summer drink, just like a rickey or a julep.

And now, in honor of “cider drinks”, a song that reminds us of the good times:

Kick-Off Sunday

Flash floods, tropical humidity, and air-conditioning -- that's right, Fall has begun. We'd taken the summer off from baking and drinking -- well, just baking -- and so we decided to start off with a few very seasonal selections. But like the weather, we ended up with a little more Summer than Fall. In fact, we didn't even bake.

Instead we went with a Stovetop Apple Cranberry Crumble, from The Weekend Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge, everyone's favorite Connecticut homemaker. You'll see more from this book in future posts, since it's the one with which we first started off teaching ourselves how to bake. Here's what Abby Dodge promises in the book:

Nice, eh?

Well, we took a few liberties with ours, outlined below.

Filling:
3 tbs butter
5 apples (aprox. 2 lbs), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced - We used Golden Delicious, but any medium-tart apple will work
3/4 c cranberries (Abby calls for frozen or fresh. We couldn't find any of either in our outer borough, so we improvised with the Craisins in our cupboard)
1/2 c light brown sugar
3 tbsp flour
1tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (we grated our own from whole nuts)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Melt butter in 10- to 11-inch skillet. In a bowl, combine apples, cranberries, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then add to butter. Add vanilla and salt to the skillet mixture and toss until well blended. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring until the sugar is melted and the apples begin to carmelize (about 5 min). Cover and reduce heat to low, simmering for aprox. 12 min, until the apples are tender.

Meanwhile, make the topping:

3 tbs butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 c crunchy granola
3 tbsp maple syrup

Again, melt the butter in a separate skillet over medium heat. Then stir in cinnamon and add granola. Cook, stirring constantly, until granola is hot and evenly coated. You may taste here and see if it needs more cinnamon. Drizzle maple syrup over granola and stir until well blended, about 2 min. Keep warm until the filling is ready.

Uncover the filling pan and check the apples for tenderness. If they've released more than a cup of juice, turn up the heat and boil some of it off. Remove from heat and scatter topping on the filling.

Not that different from the book, really.

Can be served hot, warm, or room temperature. We ate it with vanilla bean ice cream, and we're looking forward to tossing some vanilla soy milk on top tomorrow morning for breakfast. The craisins made this a bit sweeter than it would be otherwise, though not too sweet, and rather sticky, but they turned out to be a surprisingly good alternative to real cranberries.

What are those drinks behind the plates? Funny you should ask...

We had been thinking of a hot drink like a toddy but settled on two that were cold but definitely fit with the Crumble. Bull's Milk and its Variation, both from the fantastic online Cocktail Database (try their Mixilator). Don't worry, Bull's Milk has nothing to do with Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Both of these recipes are pretty simple, but you get some unusual brandy drinks out of them. Usually we use E&J VS brandy for most drinks. It tastes fine on its own and definitely when mixed (though nothing can fix a Stinger). But this time we tried ABK6 VS cognac.

Bull's Milk
2oz brandy
2oz milk
1/4 tsp sugar (superfine -- aka "bar sugar" -- is best, but if you only have regular sugar then dissolve it in some warm water first)

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled glass. Grate some fresh nutmeg on top. We garnished with a cinnamon stick.


How'd it taste? Well... basically like brandy and milk together. There is such little sugar and the nutmeg comes in so late that it's not all that complex or even sweet. We thought it was okay, but then we tried the variation.

Bull's Milk Variation
1oz light rum
1 1/2 oz brandy
1/2 tsp sugar
6oz milk

Shake with ice and strain into a tall glass. Grate nutmeg and cinnamon on top.


There we go. An alcoholic milkshake that can hold its own again the Brandy Alexander. The added milk and sugar help this drink along, and the rum cuts down on the cognac so that it's not so overwhelming. We could even imagine heating it up and trying it a few weeks from now when the weather catches up and Fall finally comes.