About a week ago a good friend and I hosted our second-annual holiday cookie exchange. We had a wonderful turnout, and thanks to our adventurous baking companions, had quite the diverse spread of baked goods, including lemon tea cookies, cranberry polenta cookies, peanut butter blossoms and peppermint patty cookies. Absent, however, was gingerbread.
Given that making gingerbread cut-out cookies from scratch can be quite an ordeal, I’m not terribly surprised. Heck, I’ve been known on more than one occasion to buy a log of premade dough for my gingerbread cookies, so that I can spend more time decorating and less time mixing and kneading.
Recently, I’ve come upon a strange source of motivation for making my own scratch gingerbread men: a cocktail.
Well, I guess it’s not so strange that booze should inspire me, but rather that alcohol would motivate me to be productive rather than binge on Cheetos and episodes of Duck Dynasty. I need some gingerbread men, you see, to use as a garnish for this sweet, sassy cocktail from Kilbeggan.
Kilbeggan® Gingerbread Crunch
1 3/4 parts Kilbeggan® Irish Whiskey
1 3/4 parts apple juice
2/3 part cinnamon syrup 1/3 part lemon juice
1/4 part brown sugar syrup
For Cocktail: Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake and double strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish rim with crushed gingerbread cookies and brown sugar.*
For Garnish: Place gingerbread cookies in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin until fine. Add brown sugar.
*I prefer to have my gingerbread man dangling precariously off the rim of the glass, but if you’re feeling particularly misandric, go with the original instructions and bash the hell out of your ginger guy.
In either case, savor the contrast between the gingery textured cookie (bits) and the smooth autumnal sweetness of the libation. After two, you may even be inspired to wrap that pile of presents.
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2013.