This post was made in partnership with Cask & Crew. Recipe and ideas are my own.
My husband has this plate that hangs on the wall in our kitchen (yes, we have a decorative plate. Actually, there are two in the house. Laugh if you must but they’re pretty cool looking.). On the plate are two older gentlemen curiously hovering above a globe, one holds a magnifying glass and some papers while the other points at some uncertain location; it’s called Newfound Worlds. It’s also apparently a Norman Rockwell painting so you all can look it up and check it out too.
What’s funny about this is, and how it connects to today’s drink, is the fact that these men are stationed comfortably in a library somewhere, discovering from the comfort of their armchairs. Are they really discovering new worlds? Maybe it’s a discovery for them, even if they are not actually there. My equivalent would be browsing travel sites, for hours, and not actually going on any trips. Sometimes one just needs a mental vacation.
So about today’s drink. Today we’re taking a tour around the world with our ingredients: we start in America, then head off to Britain, Spain, Italy, and then we dash down to some tropical islands. A delicious trip, but from the comfort of our armchair.
The star ingredient here is the Cask & Crew Walnut Toffee Whiskey, a lovely balance of buttery sweetness, bitter walnuts and a punch from the whiskey. It’s tasty on its own, with a blend of 51% Canadian rye and 49% American corn, but it’s also great mixed into drinks where the notes of vanilla and spice shine through. For this cocktail, I wanted to heighten the nuttiness of the whiskey with some Amontillado Sherry and round out those spice factors with bitters and sweet vermouth. For an unexpected twist, coconut syrup adds a freshness that lightens the drink a bit. Sipping it from your armchair you experience both the familiar and the exotic.
Oh, and the other decorative plate…it’s a white tiger in a tuxedo.
If you’re ready to take a mental vacation, let’s mix up this drink already!
1-1/2 ounces Cask & Crew Walnut Toffee Whiskey
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
3/4 ounce Amontillado sherry
1/4 ounce coconut syrup* (see note below about making your own!)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes orange bitters
orange peel for garnish
In a shaker 2/3 filled with ice, add in Cask & Crew Walnut Toffee Whiskey, sweet vermouth, Amontillado sherry, coconut syrup, Angostura bitters, and orange bitters. Shake 20 seconds and then strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Express orange oils over the drink and garnish with peel.
*If you’d like to make your own coconut syrup, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water and 1 cup flaked coconut in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir and let mixture come to just under a boil. Turn heat down to low and stir to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 1 hour. Fine strain into an airtight container (I like wide mouth ball jars for these) and store, refrigerated, for up to one month.
For more information on Cask & Crew, please visit them at caskandcrew.com!
Are you going to Tales this year? Can we meet at Tales? I’m reaching out to you about meeting up at TOTC… Sorry guys, I did not attend Tales of the Cocktail this year. I really don’t know when I’ll make that happen, if ever. However, I was able to bypass the crowds and the sweltering, miserable 105° heat with god-knows-how-high humidity and just look at everyone’s Instagram and Twitter and quite frankly that was great and totally enough, thanks.
Lately though it’s been hard to muster up the interest to pretend everything is OK and go eventing and snap some ‘grams. Instead I’ve been compulsively scrolling through the news with an ever increasing knot in my stomach wondering what the hell is going on in the world. It makes all this social media and even this website seem, well…¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Spectacle. We’re now moving onto spectacle. When we all expect what’s in the glass to taste great, you’re going to need a 3 ring circus to bring the audience in, at least when we’re talking about here in the blog/social media world. There has been a trend with the younger, newer drinking age audience to stop making drinks at home and to cease entertaining. Their eyeballs are glued onto their phones looking for the next great cat bar, not to necessarily go there, but to “like” the idea of it and quickly move on to the next strange idea.
This is a weird spot to be in when you’ve been happily plugging along on your website, coming up in the (second? third?) craft cocktail movement and sharing a love of home bartending. The newer audience will not be home bartenders, and the audience you’ve been talking to is going to start getting home bartending fatigue. Even I see that in myself. I’ve stopped reading a lot of sites, even ones I’ve loved, and stopped browsing through a good chunk of the social media sites, and instead started reading more actual books again. I chuckle at the newest hashtag of #readafuckingbook and am actively giving my brain a break from the nonsense and just the relentless tragedy that coexist in the same feeds.
I hope you all find a little something that makes you happy this week.
This post is brought to you by Jackson Morgan Southern Cream. Recipes and ideas are my own.
Back in April while I was at the WSWA show in Vegas, and happily sipping on some great–and, let’s be honest, not so great–liquors, I happened across the 
Salted caramel! Cinnamon! Fall! I’m more than happy to put these flavors in all my cocktails come September, but to keep it just a bit summer-y (I mean, it’s still only August), I’ve infused some whiskey with roasted peanuts. Combined, the resulting flavors are rich and warm with a fun pop of savory from the peanuts. It’s not too sweet with just enough creaminess in the mouthfeel. And since we’re serving it over ice, you can enjoy sipping on this cocktail even while the sun’s still out.
Some notes on infusions:
Procrastination has gotten the better of me this week as we speed, much too fast for my liking, into the 3rd month of the year. March is looking to be the most jam packed month yet this year as I’ve said “yes” to maybe one too many events, my mother is in town, and we celebrate multiple birthdays, St. Patrick’s Day (I am a 1/4 Irish), and Easter. So of course, instead of working on projects, I’ve been covering my ears and eyes going NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH and making batches of brownies and spending copious amounts of time photographing my purse contents.
So here’s the thing. I enjoy an Irish Coffee from time to time; like, a few sips and then I’m usually done. It’s a lot of hot coffee and I’m usually drinking it late in the evening when a giant hot coffee is not really what I want right then. I’m also usually drinking them at a party or an event and bless their hearts for trying, but the coffee is usually not very good either. To control this situation for myself, and hopefully for you all, let’s get a delicious coffee and miniaturize it with the right amount of booze and not force people to drink giant hot coffees at 8pm.
I went ahead and created a straight up Irish Coffee version, garnished with the tiniest of lemon peel, and then bastardized it and went crazy adding in chocolate and Fernet Branca because I love chocolate mint anything including my coffee and for this one occasion, with my whiskey. Ooooh, I’m so crazy…
The original version of these has a strong, rich coffee flavor with a hint of whiskey at the finish. The cream is mixed in so you’re not trying to eat a delicate jello shot while whipped cream melts all over your fingers – gross. For the mocha-mint version, you get a lot of Fernet (a little goes a long way!) with a strong mocha finish and a more subtle whiskey punch at the end.
Irish Coffee Jello Shots (Makes 24, 2/5 ounce shots)