When I was in high school I remember seeing an advertisement for Stuart Weitzman shoes in which the tagline was “We’re a little obsessed with shoes”. Lately I think I’m becoming a little obsessed with food. Of course, I can’t really be blamed since the time between Thanksgiving to New Year is pretty much one collective excuse to obsess about food.
What’s the next best part of the holiday season? The Booze! If you’re in Northeast Ohio you probably know about the sweet, sweet nectar known as Great Lakes Christmas Ale. It’s brewed with honey, ginger and cinnamon and as is befitting a holiday brew it has a high alcohol content. If you didn’t get a six pack this year, you’re probably out of luck, but there’s always next year. (When you should just pick up a whole case.)
Liquor isn’t just for drinking during the season. While shopping for groceries, I noticed the assortment of holiday foods with liquor. Fruitcakes, brandy hard sauce, rum balls and rum cakes lined the shelves. I realized that during the holiday season, not only is is socially acceptable to add booze to anything you cook…it is almost expected. So I went to work on two projects: Beer Caramel Sauce and Aged Egg Nog.
I collect beer recipes, so when I found that the Magic Hat Brewing Company had a caramel sauce that called for their #9 brew I was all over it. One six pack and a candy thermometer later I was cooking up a batch to give away to friends. One friend was so impressed that he wanted to try it with the Christmas Ale to make a present for his brother. He came over and we spent the evening crafting batch number 2. Since both batches turned out so well, I think that this caramel sauce might become a holiday staple around my house.
The egg nog was a bit more challenging. I first read about it on CHOW a few years ago, and then again when Michael Ruhlman wrote about it on his blog last year. The recipe itself is quite simple. Egg yolks, sugar, milk, cream combine with enough hard liquor to kill any germs that arise from the aging process. The challenging part is coming to terms with the fact that purchasing all the liquor is an expensive endeavor which ups the price of failure. Usually if I mess up in the kitchen I’m out $10 or less, so when a recipe calls for an entire liter of Maker’s Mark, It had better turn out perfectly.
After finally getting the ingredients together and bottling it up, we tried it two and half weeks into aging. It was tasty, although still pretty boozy. I plan on trying the other bottles of it throughout the year so that I can track its progress. I didn’t whip up the suggested egg whites and cream mixture and that probably would have cut down the booziness a little bit. It did make a nice addition to coffee for a pre or post dinner pick me up.
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Librarian Foodie 