Fairytale of New York: Make This Seasonal Drink

Midday cocktails at a private ice rink at the Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, 1947. Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt.

In honour of the season and the late Shane McGowan, let’s make a Fairytale of New York cocktail named after the classic Pogues song. A seasonal take on an Old Fashioned, made festive with a spiced simple syrup, it’s from the long since closed Harbord Room in Toronto, and it needs to become a part of your annual repertoire.

The syrup comes together quickly and if you sample it straight you can really taste the pear. Pear, get it? Like a partridge in a pear tree? I don’t think pears get nearly enough representation at Christmas, so this drink rights that terrible wrong.

Fairytale of New York Cocktail

1 piece of orange peel (about 1 by 2 inches)
3/4 oz. Winter Warmth Syrup
2 dashes of Fee Brothers black walnut bitters
2 oz. Canadian whisky

Place the orange peel in a mixing glass, pour in the syrup and bitters, and muddle. Pour in the whisky, add ice, and stir until chilled. Strain over 1 large ice cube in an Old Fashioned glass.

Winter Warmth Syrup
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup Demerara sugar *
1/2 apple, peeled, cored, and diced
1/2 pear, peeled, cored, and diced
12 walnut halves
3 cinnamon sticks, broken up
6 whole cloves
1 whole nutmeg*

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool. Strain into a clean glass bottle, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Makes about 2 cups. And definitely eat the walnuts as they are now plump and candied and perfect.

* I would really rather not use one whole nutmeg just to make this syrup. That seems extravagant, so I just added 1/8th of a teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg and it was fine. #weusewhatwehave

Same with the Demerara sugar. I can’t in good conscience tell you to buy a whole bag of it when you can just use white sugar with a dash of molasses. Or you could just purchase one lone cup of Demerara sugar at Bulk Barn, which is a very Canadian thing to do.

Baking with Booze: Fireball Cinnamon Whisky Apple Cake

This photo is a cheat. Not my table, nor my cake. I’m just trying to class up my trashy booze cake post.

There is a delightful corner of the internet populated by smiley midwestern moms insisting that you start adding Fireball Cinnamon Whisky to your autumn baking.

A 1980s classic from Canada (go team!) Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is more liquid candy than it is booze. Delicious in a ‘I just ate a zillion cinnamon hearts’ kind of way, its very existence offends whisky purists, which I consider a plus. Those cheerless, brown liquor-loving pedants didn’t do Wild Cherry Jell-O shots in university and it shows.

But back to our cake. A healthy glug of alcohol mixed into the batter gives baked goods a more tender crumb (thank you, science) and Fireball brings warmth and cinnamony depth, which you can amplify by drizzling a Fireball and icing sugar glaze on top of your masterpiece. (See recipe below for exact proportions.)

Of course, if you are so inclined, and you want to spend more money, you can even DIY your own cinnamon whisky, but it’s the alchemy of turning a longtime frat house staple into an elegant dessert that’s the fun part.

And in a spooky case of synchronicity, look at this comment that I saw on The Cut’s instagram feed this week. It’s from a discussion about excessive drinking:

This tells me that the universe is practically commanding you to bake with Fireball this fall.

Here I’ve added it to a basic apple loaf cake, but according to the internet moms, you could use it to tart up a box of spice cake mix. The important thing is that you are having fun.

Fireball Apple Loaf Cake

• 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 3/4 tsp. salt

• 3/4 tsp. baking soda

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• 3/4 tsp. cloves, 1/2 tsp. allspice 

• 3 eggs

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar plus one T molasses (I add the molasses for more depth of flavour)

• 3/4 cup neutral oil, like canola

• 2 Tbsp. Fireball

• 1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or extract

• 2 medium tart apples, grated and then steeped in 2T granulated sugar, a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and even more Fireball (one or two tablespoons)

For a glaze, mix together 1 cup icing sugar and three tablespoons of Fireball and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a loaf pan with parchment. Leave it ungreased.

2. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and spices.

3. Grate two medium, tart peeled apples on the largest hole of the box grater and macerate in sugar, cinnamon and Fireball while preparing the other ingredients.

4. In a larger mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and sugars until mixture gets lighter in color. You can do this by hand or with a hand mixer. 

5. Whisk in oil, Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and vanilla.

6. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Use a spatula, as the batter becomes quite thick once you add the dry ingredients.

7. Stir in the Fireball soaked apple mixture.

8. Pour batter into the parchment-lined loaf pan and bake for 65-70 minutes depending on how hot your oven is, rotating once halfway through. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean with no crumbs clinging to it. Start checking at the 55 or 60 minute mark depending on how hot your oven runs and how obsessive you are.

9. Remove from the oven and remove the cake from the pan by lifting by the overhanging parchment (how did I live before using parchment slings?) and place on a rack to cool. You can add some of the glaze to the cake when it is still warm to let it absorb and then drizzle the remainder over the cooled cake.

A Bath, a Bottle, a Book: Gifts for a Quiet Day

I want to steep in this marble bath at Stockholm’s Ett Hem hotel until my fingers get all pruney.

Something you want/something you need

Something to wear/something to read

This dusty old couplet is a useful reminder of what makes the best gifts, but this year I’ve shortened and simplified it to ‘a bath, a bottle, a book’ because I adore alliteration as much as I like reading and good smells (and right now, everyone needs a bottle of something.)

The book itself can be new and glossy, or an out-of-print favourite, scrounged second-hand, that you need your friend to read. That may have a whiff of ‘reading assignment’, but so be it.

This inaugural Bath, Bottle and Book is a trio of gifts for a quiet homebody, rendered weary by the season:

Canada’s own Bathorium bath bomb in Boreal Fog , $12, Holt Renfrew, Etiket.ca, has an evocative name that encourages you to go walking in the bitter cold, then come home to steep in a hot tub like a giant, human tea bag, surrounded by Boreal Fog’s wondrous eucalyptus, fir and vetiver fug.

Empress 1908 gin, $52.95, LCBO, named after the Victoria, BC, hotel, is loved for its floral notes and blend of botanicals, makes a mean martini (a very last century, female writer drink) and is arrestingly beautiful enough to be displayed on a drinks tray (the aromatic, dry gin gets its colour from butterfly pea blossoms.)

One Pair of Hands (copies available here and here), is a funny, clever and often pointed, detail-rich account of Monica Dickens’ (yes, Charles’s great-granddaughter) time spent as a cook for hire in 1930s London households after she got booted from acting school and became bored with debutante life. Why this book and this author are not more famous is beyond me.