Don’t tell your high school English teacher about this drink (DiceFood.com)

Don’t tell your high school English teacher about this drink

Filed under: Coffee, Vodka, Magazines, Cocktails, Spirits, Liqueurs

Nylon Magazine, and I was flipping through it the other day when I came across the drink of the month: the Grapes of Wrath martini. The Grapes of Wrath is one of my favorite novels, but to see it as a martini? I’m not so sure how I feel.

It would be one thing if the magazine had designed a martini around a book like The Great Gatsby (I’d actually bet there are many), but The Grapes of Wrath? I mean, it takes place during the Great Depression — none of the characters go near anything like a martini, especially not one featuring Belvedere Vokda, grapes, apple juice, elderflower cordial, and a dashes of lemon juice and sauvignon blanc. Is it blasphemous, or am I reading too far into a name?

But the whole thing got me wondering about other novels, and whether they have drinks named after them. I found a Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind (another personal favorite), which consists of peach liqueur, cranberry juice and a lime wedge. That’s appropriate enough — though I’d have loved to see something perhaps with a touch of sour mix! I found a Monte Cristo with coffee and orange liqueurs, hot coffee and whipped cream, though the drink could be named after one of the various cities by that name and not the book The Count of Monte Cristo. Anyone know of any others? Extra points for books you read in high school English and for drinks that are wildly inappropriate for their respective novels.

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Recipes, Baking, On the Blogs, Real Kitchens

the recipe on Smitten Kitchen many moons ago (back in the days when Deb was simply The Smitten) and it’s stayed with me ever since, a reminder that there were Oreo heights I had not yet experienced. An opportunity arrived in the form of a dinner party and so I spent Friday night making the cookies for Saturday assembly.

It’s a quick, buttery dough that comes together easily. I found that the best way to make sure to get fairly uniform rounds was to form the flat cookie on the palm of my hand before place it gently on a Silpat-lined cookie sheet. Assembly was also easy as the filling (butter, vegetable shortening, powdered sugar and vanilla) whipped together like a dream. The only hitch I experienced was that the zip top bag I was using as a piping bag kept unzipping.

The cookies were delicious the day of assembly, but I discovered that they actually improve over a couple of days resting time, developing the exact soft-crunch consistency of the traditional Oreo cookie. I think my arteries are insisting that I wait some time, but I will definitely make these again.

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