The festive season rolls around again every year and you find yourself wondering just what you’re going to cook for your holiday feast. Chances are many of us will be cooking for family, and you probably are stocking up on extra special ingredients in your cupboards to make holiday treats. Cooking treats means buying one off ingredients for individual recipes – which usually means ending up with excess and food waste. To try and cut some of that wastage, here are a few tips and tricks to upcycling some traditional holiday ingredients to, literally, create some holiday cheer.
Leftover Fruit: Almost any fruit leftovers can be upcycled into syrups and garnishes for a variety of cocktails. Berries such as raspberries, strawberries, and, while it’s not a berry, kiwifruit, can be smashed and blended with sugar and hot water to be made into syrups. Vodka or gin and berry syrups can lighten up any meal. Leftover Marachino Cherries: Often used for festive garnishes on holiday cakes, these cherries also function as a garnish for many cocktails, including any type of whiskey sour (A great twist is an amaretto sour). Don’t throw out the syrup in the jar either! Put a dash of that into your sours to sweeten them up and over the foam as a garnish. A great twist on an old favourite.Amaretto Sour:
2 parts Amaretto
1 part lemon juice
1 part egg white
½ part maraschino juice
Combine, dry shake, then shake with ice and pour over ice. Garnish with a cherry.
Leftover Cinnamon and Vanilla:
Boil these bad boys down with a little bit of sugar and hot water. Serve with rum, rum and a bit more…. Rum. <3 You can combine apple juice, vodka, cinnamon syrup, vanilla syrup, and a bit of lemon juice - first dry shaken with egg white, then shaken with ice and you will get a gorgeous drink that tastes like apple crumble. Serve with a garnish of cinnamon on top. Another option is to put leftover cinnamon sticks and vanilla beans into bottle of spirits to infuse them. No more buying knockoff vanilla vodka, you can have the real deal!
Apple Crumble:
2 parts vanilla infused vodka
1.5 part apple juice
.5 parts lemon
.5 parts cinnamon syrup
.5 parts vanilla syrup
1 part egg white
Combine, dry shake, then shake with ice and strain into a wine glass. Garnish with cinnamon.
Have a happy time upcycling these holidays!
Xo