Cinnamon Apple Manhattan

This week’s #midweekmanhattan is made Christmas-appropriate through the addition of cinnamon and applejack:

Christmas in Manhattan #2

Photo courtesy of Addison Berry, some rights reserved.

Rich and red, and imbued with all of the flavours of a good Christmas postprandial, the Christmas Manhattan #2 is this week’s festive #midweekmanhattan:

1. Add 50ml rye whiskey, 50ml Ruby Port, a teaspoon of agave syrup and three dashes of Angostura bitters to a shaker of ice.
2. Shake well and strain into a chilled coupe glass.
3. Garnish with an amaretto cherry.

Mince Pie Cognac

Photo courtesy of Sarah, some rights reserved

 

Last year I put the decision between Christmas pudding or mince pie bourbon to a Twitter vote and Christmas Pudding Bourbon came out on top.  It was tasty, super sweet and full of festive flavour.

This year then, it is the turn of the humble mince pie to be boozified.  I’ve decided to infuse it into Cognac instead of bourbon and over the next four weeks I will use this to showcase four Christmas cocktail recipes.

As I suggested last year, the mince pie infusion is much easier to make, but in an attempt to help create a clearer, more easily filtered infusion, I have decided to follow a sous vide recipe.

1. Add 500ml of good quality Cognac and 200g of store-bought mincemeat to a ziplock bag.  Expel all of the air and seal.
2. Heat the sealed bag at 45°c for one hour (see my Sous Vide Syrup recipe for my home sous vide technique).
3. Once the hour is up, place the sealed bag in the freezer overnight.
4. Next morning strain and filter the mix and bottle.  Yum!

Christmas in Manhattan

Avid readers (hello mum!) will recall that last week we started infusing the guts of a Christmas pudding in some bourbon.  One week on and the infusion was ready to be strained, filtered and decanted into a bottle:

1. Sieve the fruit from the bourbon and press down on the fruit to express as much liquid as possible.
2. Filter the syrupy liquid through coffee filter papers and store in a clean bottle.

This has a longer shelf life than its taste will require.  In other words you will finish it before it spoils!  My first pour with the finished bourbon was a Christmas Manhattan (I think I might have overdone it!):

1. Combine 50ml Christmas pudding bourbon, 25ml sweet vermouth, 12.5ml Christmas Mulled Cup and two dashes of Teapot bitters in a mixing glass.
2. Add ice and stir well for sixty seconds.
3. Double strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Finish with a spritz of Christmas tincture.