Spirited Cooking Day

I was captivated by the Champagne brownies made by Kelli from Lovescool, but the price tag threw me off. One commenter said she'd paid over $50 for the ingredients. I'm just a little bit lush, so I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea: enact the brownies with all Oregon ingredients. Domaine St. Michelle Blanc de Noirs from nearby pinor noir country. Cremerie Classique butter from Clackamas, Oregon. Dagoba chocodrops.

I made the brownies almost following the directions, leaving off the champagne jelly (that seemed just a bit over-the-top to me) and replacing six ounces of the dark chocolate with a cup of first-quality cocoa and six extra tablespoons of butter. The texture? Amazing, fudgy, moist, absolutely transcendant. The flavor? A bit too rich and bitter for my taste. My three-year-old took a huge bite and then spit it out (it's not exactly preschooler speed). It's a recipe worth making, but I'd make certain your audience was properly prepped to appreciate the richness, the expense, the work.

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I'd been itching to try this recipe since it came out in October's Gourmet . I am a sucker for alchemy cuisine, anything that rises or changes color or shape and turns into something else, so the idea of purple wine-soaked spaghetti thrilled me. This recipe is basically a version of my favorite broccoli and ziti standby, only with the addition of red wine. I had assumed before reading the recipe that the noodles would be boiled in the wine but it was actually a process that involved parboiling both the pasta and the broccoli.

The wine is added to the partially-cooked pasta. The fun part is watching it slowly change color as you boil it. The recipe calls for a red zinfandel, and you could probably use any red, but I think a heavier wine like a zinfandel or a cabernet sauvignon adds a nice purple hue. I was curious to see if it would taste wine-heavy. It definitely had a wine taste although it wasn't overpowering.

Overall I'm not sure if it added enough bang for my buck to cook pasta this way again, but it was fun for novelty's sake. One caveat to those who are making this recipe is to have extra wine on hand if you want to recreate the deep purple shown in the Gourmet article. It's definitely festive for the holidays.

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I couldn't really find a specific recipe for cranberry sauce made with Campari, but this is something that will work with pretty much any cranberry sauce recipe. You just add a splash (or more) of Campari to a good, solid cranberry sauce recipe. Perfect for Christmas! Let's try a really simple recipe from Allrecipes.com: 

1 cup white sugar
1 cup orange juice
12 oz package of fresh cranberries

Put ingredients in a sauce pan and dissolve the sugar in the o.j. over medium heat. Stir in the cranberries and cook unti they start to pop, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, transfer to a bowl. Add splash of Campari very carefully. The sauce will get thicker as it cools.

I make chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons each year for the holidays but in honor of today's event I decided to perform a few boozy experiments. I am a firm believer that anything can be made better with a little booze. I think every cook who has experimented with cooking with liquor probably has a few bottles of half-finished liqueurs around the house. My recipe uses the same proportions as this one only I use almond instead of vanilla extract. In order to get the maximum flavor for my experiments, I upped the flour a bit so that I could include more liqueur. The results were mixed.

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This sounds like something Homer Simpson would have a wet dream over. 

1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3 tablespoons dried buttermilk powder
2 large eggs
3 oz. IPA beer
4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled

The recipe seems rather easy to make. Just make sure you pay close attention to the directions (especially when it comes to making sure you don't overmix and don't overbrown the donuts).