Everyone Loves Punch During the Holidays (Especially the Host)

Serving punch at your holiday party will take the burden of having to play bartender to your guests. The Pomander Punch, above, tastes of cranberries and spice.

The final fifteen minutes before your guests are scheduled to arrive are always fraught with trepidation. We curse ourselves with nonstop invective. “Why the @#$% did I agree to throw this @#$%ing party. I’m such a @#$%ing idiot.” It’s at these moments, when we all turn into whining teenagers, that we must take a deep breath and rise to the occasion. You threw this cocktail party because you are awesome and your friends rock, and you wanted to share with them some cocktail and party-food pairings that will be remembered forever (and not in a bad way). So that you will be touted as the cocktail-party thrower of the century and not the sniveling spaz you seem to be playing at the moment, you must do the following: make a punch. Not the kind you imbibed as a child—those were sweet and sparkling sugar-rush inducers filled with ginger ale and neon sherbet. No, this punch will be filled with high-quality spirits and liqueurs, possibly champagne, fresh seasonal fruit, and flavors that will send you into adulthood negating any old associations with prom punch ever again. Welcome to the grownup table; you can now fold up that kiddy card table and banish it forever.

Punch is a blessing or, more appropriate, a mangala. The word itself, many believe, derives from the Hindi word panch, meaning five, alluding to the five ingredients that purportedly made up historical punch: spirits, sugar, lemon, water, and tea or spices. But if you ask the average josephine what she thinks of when she thinks of punch in a historical context, she may describe for you a Hogarthian scene of jack-tars, slinging their flagons while singing a shanty tune honoring the drunken sailor, which isn’t at all inappropriate. Sailors brought the Hindi punch back with them to England, bedazzled by its bold flavors of spice and citrus, and from the early seventeenth to the mid nineteenth centuries, punch ruled supreme. Punch houses dotted the London landscape, filling the hearts and minds of men with merriment. Sharing a bowl was like taking communion: it brought you closer to God, if you let it.

We want punch to bring you closer to a reasonable frame of mind. With a punch at the ready, all you have to do is point your guests in the direction of the chilling bowl and say, “help yourself to a delicious glass of [fill in the blank] punch.” At first they may be surprised that no islands of lime sherbet dot this quaff, but after a sip, you’ll hear their contented sighs, and they’ll hear yours.

Here are a few punch recipes that will brighten up your party and set your mind at ease. Some of them are for 1 serving, but with a little math, you can easily create a bowl full of shimmering panch. Just remember to make a block of ice for the punch bowl (you can freeze water in a freezer-safe bowl).

Global Punch
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Jack Daniel’s
2 ounces amber (medium-bodied) rum (such as Old New Orleans or Mount Gay Eclipse)
1/2 ounce ginger liqueur (such as Domaine de Canton)
1 ounce real pomegranate grenadine
1/2 ounce elderflower liqueur (such as St-Germain)
2 ounces red grapefruit juice (you can substitute pink if red is not available)
1/4 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce lime juice
2 dashes Angostura orange bitters (you can substitute with another orange bitters)

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Serves 3.

If making a bowl of punch, first make a block of ice in a freezer-safe bowl that’s smaller than the punch bowl. Then, multiply all the ingredients by eight or more depending on the size of your party. Refrigerate until chilled. About a half hour before serving, remove the ice from the bowl and place in the punch bowl. Pour the punch into the bowl. Garnish with lemon and lime wheels. Ladle into punch cups or glasses.

Try pairing with Chorizo Sobres, little deep-fried spicy smoked sausage and peach bites.

Rihanna
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce amber rum (such as Old New Orleans or Mount Gay Eclipse)
1/2 ounce white rum (such as Mount Gay Silver Eclipse)
1/8 ounce Cruzan Black Strap rum
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
1/4 ounce Velvet Falernum
1/2 ounce simple syrup*
1/4 ounce crème de banana (such as Bols)
3/4 ounce orange juice
1/4 ounce lime juice

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. If you’re feeling the call of the tiki gods, garnish with cherries and banana slices poked through with a straw. Serves 1.

If making a bowl of punch, first make a block of ice in a freezer-safe bowl that’s smaller than the punch bowl. Then, multiply all the ingredients by eight or more depending on the size of your party. Refrigerate until chilled. About a half hour before serving, remove the ice from the bowl and place in the punch bowl. Pour the punch into the bowl. Garnish with cherries and banana slices. Ladle into punch cups or glasses.

* Dissolve one cup of sugar in one cup of water over low heat, stirring occasionally. When all the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat, let cool, and refrigerate in an airtight container for up to a month.

Try pairing with baked coconut shrimp.

Pomander Punch
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces cranberry sauce–infused Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon Carolina Moonshine*
1 ounce bourbon (try Bulleit)
1/2 ounce clementine orange juice
1/4 ounce St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
block of ice

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into chilled glass. Garnish with a half-moon slice of clementine or a whole pericarp of star anise. Serves 1.

If making a bowl of punch, first make a block of ice in a freezer-safe bowl that’s smaller than the punch bowl. Then, multiply all the ingredients by eight or more depending on the size of your party. Refrigerate until chilled. About a half hour before serving, remove the ice from the bowl and place in the punch bowl. Pour the punch into the bowl. Garnish with clementine orange wheels and star anise pericarps. Ladle into punch cups or glasses.

* In an airtight container, add 1/3 cup homemade cranberry sauce (follow directions on package of cranberries) for every 2 cups moonshine (you can substitute vodka if moonshine is not available). Let infuse for at least five days and up to two weeks (the longer you wait, the better), shaking the container at least once a day. Strain into another airtight container and label.

Try pairing with bacon-wrapped dates.


Blackberries and cinnamon combine to create an amazing flavor sensation. This punch is boozy and bodacious. The bowl will be emptied by nightfall.

Bramble Punch
(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
4 1/2 ounces amber (medium-bodied) rum (such as Old New Orleans or Mount Gay Eclipse)
3 ounces cognac (such as Martell VSOP or Hennessy VS)
1 1/2 ounces Jeżynówka (blackberry-flavored brandy)
3/4 ounces Becherovka (Czech spice liqueur)
1 1/2 ounces cinnamon-infused black tea*
1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 1/2 ounces tangerine juice
1 1/2 ounces pink grapefruit juice
ice cubes, preferably in a chunk, or a block with blackberries frozen within.

Method
Add all the ingredients (except the chunk of ice cubes) into a large shaker or capped bottle. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds, making sure the sugar dissolves (if you prefer, you can dissolve the sugar in a little water before adding it to the mix). Place ice chunk or ice block in bowl. Pour punch into bowl. If using a chunk of ice cubes, the ice cubes will start to break apart. When they do, or if you are using a block of ice, stir the punch with the ladle to chill, wait a minute (do not rush, let the ice dissolve a bit), stir again, and serve. Add a blackberry to each cup for a nice sweet-tart surprise at the end of your drink.

Serves 4. You can easily double or triple the recipe.

* Steep a tea bag (with black tea) and a cinnamon stick in 1 cup of boiling water. Remove the tea bag after 3 hours. Remove cinnamon stick after 3 days. If you can’t wait 3 days, then make sure you shake it well before using.

Try pairing with Cheddar Blue Fricos, lacy and crispy wafers of cheese.

photos © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz

Holiday Cheer from Cocktail Buzz

A Hard Candy cocktail will lift your holiday spirits.

A few years back, Ars Nova, New York’s premier hub for emerging artists and new work, asked us to come up with a cocktail for their Winter Holiday party. The theme: Candy Land. Remember Candy Land, the colorful board game we played as preschoolers? Of course you don’t, you’ve had too much to drink since then. But reach back, far back into the folds and synapses of yesteryear, and you might just remember marching your gingerbread pawns around the board, picking up sweet treats along the way while aiming for the final destination, the Candy Castle. The real goal of the game was to help children learn their colors. That took about two seconds. All the game really did teach us was to crave a bowl of M&M’s with a Pixy Stix chaser.

So we created a cocktail that tastes like candy canes—high-octane candy canes—and dubbed it “Hard Candy,” the “hard” of course referring to the amount and proof of the spirits involved. It’s definitely a sipper, and we do recommend only one, but if you must have two, make sure you’ve played Candy Land with the kids in your life before venturing onto a second.

Hard Candy

(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces Jack Daniel’s
1 ounce white crème de cacao
1/2 ounce peppermint schnapps
mini candy cane, as garnish

Method
Stir in a mixing glass half-filled with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with ice (or up, if you dare). Garnish with a mini candy cane or other peppermint candy.

photo by Steve Schul

Making Amends with Yukon Jack

by Paul Zablocki

I came home from work Monday night feeling pretty crappy; a cold had invaded my body, and I knew that I would be a teetotaler for the week. Steve doesn’t much like to have a cocktail by himself, but he thought that Monday night would be a good night for a hot toddy. A mid-fall chill kissed the air, and he was up for a comforting mug of hot whiskey. So, he walked over to the bar (I was in the kitchen boiling the water for his toddy and my tea) as we chatted about this and that, and, not really focusing on the task at hand, reached for a bottle with “Jack” festooned across the label. He proceeded to make his toddy: two ounces of whiskey, a teaspoon of sugar, and 3 ounces of hot water. Simple. Comforting. Old school.

Hot Toddy

(adapted by Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces your favorite whiskey
1 teaspoon sugar
3 ounces hot water

Method
In a mug, add the whiskey, sugar, and water. Give it a stir. Enjoy curled up on the sofa with a loved one. (Make sure your loved one has a hot toddy as well.)

Usually the kitchen becomes redolent with the sweet caramel-burnished scent of bourbon once the hot water hits the whiskey-shot mug, but this time I smelled oranges. Steve put the mug ever-so-gently to his lips, blew a little to cool it down, and took the first sip, the one that is supposed to satisfy your expectations for wanting the drink in the first place. This time not a smile, but a wince, followed by a grimace, followed by “What the hell is this?” Ladies and gentlemen, I must take a moment to step outside the tale and proffer some friendly advice. Concentrate while making your cocktail, drink, potion, whatever. You don’t want the wrong spirit gumming up the works. For you see, Steve, thinking he had grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s 7-year Tennessee whiskey, actually pulled a bottle of Yukon Jack off the shelf. For those of you who know the power of Yukon Jack, I’m sure you’re wincing along with Steve. For those of you unfamiliar with this spirit, let’s just start by saying that Yukon Jack calls itself “The Black Sheep of Canadian Liquors” on its label. Imported from Canada, Yukon Jack is a honey-colored liqueur that, upon unscrewing the cap, releases a sweet blast of baby-aspirin orange. Some may find this appealing. I, however, do not, for as a child riddled with fever, I loathed having to chew up four Johnson’s baby aspirins in order to abate my ague. (Once, I even dropped one to the floor thinking it would be forever lost in the shag carpet, only to be confounded by my father who later discovered it and brought it to my attention before my mom had a chance to vacuum.) Getting back to the tale, we tried to fix the mistake toddy by adding some Irish whiskey, but that didn’t help much. The drink ended up down the drain. Always a sad moment in the Cocktail Buzz Kitchen.

You’re probably asking yourself why we have a bottle of Yukon Jack in the house. Well, in full disclosure, I bought it on a whim one night while eying the shelves at Warehouse Liquors near NYU and thought I would give it a try. I do love to take a stab at creating cocktails out of misfit spirits and liqueurs. And also I read the product statement on the back of the bottle: “Yukon Jack^® is a taste born of hoary nights, when lonely men struggled to keep their fires lit and cabins warm. Boldly flavorful, yet surprisingly smooth, there is no spirit like Yukon Jack^®.” Hot. The thoughts of cowboys hanging out around a campfire, trying to keep warm while keeping each other company, was enough to make me whip out the credit card when the man at the register yelled, “Next!”

Now home, I had the bottle in my eager hands. Reading once again the label’s incantational pro–male-bonding words, I had a Brokeback Mountain moment, and thought fondly of Jake and Heath, in movie-lovers’ embrace, drinking whiskey from the same flask in the frosty Wyoming mountains. Smiling, I unscrewed the cap and took a whiff. Egad, what the hell is this? Turns out, Yukon Jack is not a real whiskey at all, but a 100-proof honey-based liqueur that is born in Valleyfield, Quebec, and makes is way into the U.S. by way of Hartford, Conn., where its bottled and then distributed.

Put off by the aroma, but inspired by life on the range, I decided to give it a go. What the hell, why not. Maybe something good can come out of all this sweet orangy syrup. Well, here goes. My thought was that whiskey was indeed needed to mix with the Yukon Jack, so why not use one of our favorite Jacks, Mr. Daniel’s. I knew that, based on the other ingredients I would add to the mix, these two spirits had to balance each other so as not to taste like grain alcohol laced with Kool-Aid. The first thing I thought of, to combat the sweetness of the Yukon Jack, was the bitter-orange brightness of Campari. The acidity in fresh orange juice would also cut through the alcoholic sugariness of the Canadian liqueur, so I added some of that, along with a dash of orange bitters, which would add another layer of what the Québécois would say je ne sais quoi. I then shook it all up in ice, strained it into a cocktail glass, and added a lemon twist. Voila! A sip revealed promise. So I quickly adjusted ratios and came up with a drink I was pleased with. I tried it on the rocks to see if I liked it more, and called Steve over to give it a try. Dangit, it was dee-lightful. You could taste the citrusy goodness that is inherent in the Yukon Jack, but when married with the tangy orange juice and bitter Campari, mellowed by the charred-maple sweetness of the Jack Daniel’s, a real cocktail emerged. We liked it better on-the-rocks, but I suppose it all depends on how chilly the evening is, cowboy. If you do drink it up, make sure you let the ice dissolve a little bit before you give it a vigorous shake. The water will help dilute the sweetness.

But what to dub it? A no-brainer, really. It uses both Yukon Jack and Jack Daniel’s, why not call it Jack and Jack, a sort of play on Jack and Coke.

Jack and Jack

(created by Paul Zablocki, Cocktail Buzz)
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces Yukon Jack
1 ounce Jack Daniel’s
1 ounce fresh orange juice
3/4 ounce Campari
dash orange bitters

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds. Strain into a ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with an orange or lemon twist, if led.

Upon further rumination, I liked the name even more. Jack and Jack is also a play on Jack and Jill, and thinking about the two Jacks running up the hill to fetch a pail of water, or driving a herd of sheep, I was content with the notion of bringing a little gaiety to our list of house-made cocktails. What the conservatives would call “spreading my agenda.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, our tale brings us to Connecticut, the land of Lucy and Ricky in the later seasons, where the rich park their carcasses after working long hours in Manhattan skyscrapers, where marriage between two men or two women is legal. An enlightened place, if you will. (Shame on you Maine for your bigotry. May you come to your senses, along with California and the rest of those other states in this great land, and realize that marriage is for all.) So we brought the recipe for Jack and Jack with us in our heads to the cozy town of Wolcott where my cousin Matthew and his lovely fiancée Kelly were to tie the knot by an idyllic pond. “Can you tell the bartender what kind of cocktail to make for us?” pled the newly wed Matthew, Kelly holding his hand, practically jitterbugging with her husband, both beaming in both connubial bliss and the expectation of a yummy cocktail. “I've got just the thing,” I promised them. So I sidled up to the bar and gave the man behind the stick the recipe for the Jack and Jack. “On the rocks.” It was a muggy June night and the ice would soothe the sultriness. They took a few sips and their eyes lit up more. “Thank you so much!” they cooed as a gaggle of bridesmaids whisked them off to the dance floor. Steve and I would join them anon. There’s nothing better than cutting a rug with the one you love at a wedding.


Sidebar:
At 50% alcohol, Yukon Jack will get you buzzed. This guy seems to love his Yukon Jack with his camping family. And this guy gets quite a jolt from swiggin’ some Yukon Jack (another camper . . . hmm). This young Canadian guy can’t seem to keep his shirt on, he loves his Yukon Jack so much.

Grilled Cheese as Proustian Madeleine: A Late Supper Rhapsody

by Paul Zablocki

Steve and I are like the Spanish: We eat supper late—sometimes as late as 10:30PM. There are several reasons involved in our delayed prandial fulfillment. (1) We usually don’t walk through the door until most Americans have already eaten their grub and parked themselves in front of the boob tube (we’re smart: we combine these two pastimes). (2) We usually like to chat about our days while enjoying a cocktail, and perhaps a little nosh. (Sometimes we split a cocktail. This is known as a “splitty.” You can apply this catchword to anything bibulous that is split between two people, viz. a Manhattan, a muffin, a Carnegie Deli tower-of-pastrami sandwich.) (3) We like to cook, so when ordering in sounds unappealing, we scour the cupboards, freezer, and fridge for inspiration.

Last night inspiration seemed to ooze from the cupboards and fridge. (The freezer is usually a not-so-friendly appliance at 9:30PM. It takes a long time to thaw a pork loin.) After a Black Hawk Cocktail—a slightly tart simple drink made with bourbon, slow gin, and lemon juice—we experimented with some more whiskey, namely Jack Daniel’s, to come up with a drink for my friend Bruce who came up with a great name for a drink: The Preening Ass. I recently had an authentic Mexican dinner with Bruce, and told him about the joys of Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine. Bruce is mainly a wine drinker, but the idea of sweet, custard-tasting Catdaddy really appealed to him, and since Bruce works in advertising, he’s always bouncing around names and phrases to catch one’s attention; ergo, The Preening Ass.

So last night, Steve and I set out to make a Preening Ass. But what makes an ass an ass? A buck has ginger ale, a mule ginger beer. Well, an ass is sort of like one of these animals, so it should have something fizzy, no? We decided lemon soda would fit the bill for no other reason than it sounded posh, and a preening ass would definitely want something posh in his drink. There was some limonata (lemon soda) in the mini fridge, so we were in luck. But Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine sounds anything but posh. Were we barking up the wrong tree? Hells no! The fact that our ass is preening shows you that, in a Psych 101 context, he’s hiding something. Maybe he grew up in the Deep South and on his entrance to Princeton University he wanted to hide his provenance. So he started to preen and primp, lost his dialect, and whammo, he became the Preening Ass. Tennessee borders North Carolina (the state of Catdaddy’s origin), so adding Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey seemed appropriate. Finding the right ratio was pretty simple. Add some ice, give a little stir, and sip. Not bad for a fit of inspiration. (Let it be known that we are in no way disparaging the Deep South or Princeton University. We like them both.)

Black Hawk

(from CocktailDB.com)

Ingredients
1 1/4 ounces bourbon (we used Virginia Gentleman)
1 1/4 ounces sloe gin (we used Plymouth)
1/2 ounce lemon juice
cherry, as garnish (we soaked maraschino cherries in bourbon and cognac after dumping out the bright red juice)

Method
Shake in ice for 15 seconds and strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Add cherry.

Preening Ass

(created by Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
1 ounce Jack Daniel’s
3/4 ounce Catdaddy
3 1/2 ounces limonata (we used San Pellegrino)

Method
Fill double rocks or highball glass with ice. Add the Jack Daniel’s and Catdaddy. Stir to chill. Top with limonata. Give another quick stir.

So now that the drinking portion of the evening made us happy, we decided it was high time to move on to a proper meal. It was already 9:30 and nothing was thawed. Usually when this happens we get on the phone and order some pizza or Mexican. But we were in the mood for something home-cooked and comforting . . . that reminded us of chilly nights growing up when Mom knew just the right thing to make our tummies happy. A tostada smothered in shredded iceberg wasn’t going to do it (and besides, we had one the night before). Quickly we scoured the kitchen: some leftover ciabatta about to go stale was hanging out on the counter in an anonymous paper bag. We then opened the fridge hoping for something tasty: sharp cheddar in the cheese drawer, some leftover canned tomatoes (can you already figure where I’m going with this?), some prewashed baby greens Steve picked up from the grocery store, radishes, lots of butter, a little heavy cream. I then reached for the new nonstick frying pan that Steve’s mom got him for his birthday this month, as well as a sauce pan, and we started making a mini feast: grilled cheese, tomato soup, and a side salad. The perfect late-night supper. Actually, the best supper of all time. And it’s [gasp] vegetarian. Like a Proustian madeleine, memories of eating simple, nourishing food with our families flooded us as we supped to images of the Atlanta Housewives reunion on the tube.

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients
day-old (or 2-day-old) ciabatta, sliced 1/3-inch thick
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
sharp cheddar, sliced very thinly
salt and pepper, to taste

Method
In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium-low heat, careful not to burn it. Lay the cheese between two slices of bread and place in the pan. Turn the heat up to medium and sprinkle with salt and pepper. If you have a grill press, lay it atop the sandwich. If not, give the sandwich a good press with a spatula. Grill for about 3 minutes, checking the bottom with the spatula to see if it’s golden brown. Flip and grill for another 2 minutes. Add more butter if necessary. Plate and slice in half, if you so desire.

Tomato Soup

Ingredients
8 ounces whole tomatoes from a can
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/4 cup water
salt, pepper, and hot paprika (or cayenne), to taste
leftover ciabatta, cut into cubes or ripped into pieces

Method
Heat tomatoes in a saucepan. When the liquid starts to bubble, use an immersion blender to whip them up. (If you do not have an immersion blender, you can use a countertop blender before you heat up the tomatoes.) Add cream, water, and spices, and heat for a few minutes while stirring occasionally. With any leftover ciabatta, toss pieces into the frying pan with the butter you used for the grilled cheese. Let the pieces soak up the butter and flip when they become golden brown. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and hot paprika and remove from heat. Garnish soup.

Mixology Monday XXXIII: Gay Caballero, or Infused with Walnuts

The Jack Twist . . . a sweet, nutty Cowboy drink.

As bartenders, bar chefs, mixologists—call us anything you’d like—we like to tinker. Something deep inside prevents us from ever being satisfied with settling for labeled distilled spirits. So what do we do? We strive to create flavors that excite, challenge, and hopefully satiate our ever-exploring palates by changing a spirit’s flavor profile. Like Byrd searching for the South Pole, we bravely face adversity as we taste-taste and mix old reliable spirits with a dash of this and a pinch of that, wait a few days (or weeks . . . or months), and blammo, we’ve created a liqueur.

Enter walnuts. Walnuts are one of our favorite nuts. They add a perfect complement to chocolate in a Toll House Cookie. Their marriage with bananas are a classic to-die-for component in many breads, desserts, and breakfast fare. Why not go all walnut on some whiskey such as Jack Daniel’s? After all, Jack is filtered through sugar maple charcoal. Perhaps maple and walnut would do the two-step with some tasty results. Well, after toasting some walnuts in the oven, and then infusing the darkly aromatic bits in some Jack for three days, the whiskey acquired a pleasant viscosity that made for a more pleasurable mouthfeel. Add some walnut liqueur and a little bit o’ dark brown sugar, shake it all up, and strain into a very receptive rocks glass, eager to feel the pulse of your waiting lips. Don’t forget to throw in a tiny twist of lemon, so it’ll kiss you with every sip.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the drink was named after the character in Brokeback Mountain, as portrayed by the inestimable Jake Gyllenhaal. Add a little bit of advocaat to the mix (about a 1/2 ounce), and you’ve got yourself a Jack Nasty.

Jack Twist
(created by Paul Zablocki, Cocktail Buzz)

Ingredients
2 ounces toasted walnut-infused Jack Daniel’s*
3/4 ounce walnut liqueur
1/2 tablespoon dark brown sugar
small lemon twist (about 1/2 inch)

Method
Shake vigorously with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled rocks glass. Garnish with the twist.

* Walnut-infused Jack Daniel’s
2 cups Jack Daniel’s whiskey
1/4 cup walnuts

Pour Jack Daniel’s into an airtight container. Toast walnuts in 350°F oven, or on stove top in skillet, for up to 12 minutes, careful not to burn (shake skillet occasionally). When walnuts have started to brown and you can smell their oils being released, remove from heat and add to Jack Daniel’s. Cover. Infuse for 4 days, shaking occasionally from day to day. After four days, strain Jack Daniel’s into a clean container, and discard walnuts.

photo © Steve Schul, Cocktail Buzz