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Fact One: I enjoyed the heck out of My True Love Gave To Me.
Fact Two: December requires a lot of caffeine and booze.
Fact Three: FYA Book Club selections always go better with a punny, themed cocktail.
Therefore, science -- nay, justice -- required me to come up with a cocktail in honor of this month's FYA Book Club pick! Once I thought of the name, it seemed imperative to make a caffeinated, boozy drink to propel us through all of our parties.
One holiday treat in my family were the chocolate oranges that you got to whack on the table to break apart -- although there's no chocolate in this recipe, it's still reminiscent of that particular treat. The ginger in the whipped cream gives it a warm, spicy tinge, but if you're not a ginger fan you could subsitute cinnamon, clove (use a much smaller measurement, though!), or nutmeg. Don't like orange liqueur? Try another fruit-based liqueur, like Cherry Heering. Don't like bourbon? Try rum. (You're out of luck if you hate coffee, though.)
Tastes great at an FYA Book Club holiday party!
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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MY BREW LOVE GAVE TO ME
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Note: this cocktail is both very spirit-forward (which is the polite, mixologist way of saying "very boozy"), especially if you don't stir the whipped cream into the cocktail beforehand, and very coffee-forward, for lack of a better term. Beware! If you like coffee that's less likely to slap you across the face with its bitterly caffeinated hand, you may want to add a tablespoon of water to the shaker.
(I have no such reservations, and I find this to be everything I dream of in a cocktail.)
INGREDIENTS
- 2oz cold brew concentrate (I make my own with this recipe; you may have a favorite commercially-available brand!)
- 1.5 oz bourbon
- 0.5 oz cointreau or other orange liqueur
- 1 tsp brown sugar (regular white sugar is fine, I just like brown)
- Ginger Cointreau whipped cream (recipe follows)
- Orange zest
Add coffee, bourbon, Cointreau, and brown sugar to a cocktail shaker with ice (add a tablespoon of water if you're worried the coffee will be too strong). Shake vigorously for thirty seconds, or until the shaker is quite cold. Strain into a rocks glass (or fancy teacup, if you have one). Add several spoonfuls of whipped cream -- enough to cover the surface of the coffee -- and grate some orange zest over the whipped cream. Serve!
Hot variation: substitute hot coffee for the cold brew concentrate. Pour hot coffee over sugar, bourbon, and cointreau into a mug; top with whipped cream and orange zest.
GINGER COINTREAU WHIPPED CREAM
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 tbsp Cointreau
- 1 tbsp white sugar
- 1 tsp ground ginger
Add all ingredients to a cold bowl (preferably metal, and this is a great time to use your KitchenAid mixer if you have one) and whip until stiff peaks form.
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