I spent St. Patrick’s Day my junior year of college in Dublin. I drank whiskey for the first time while hiding behind trees in St. Stephen's Green, then walked buzzed down Grafton street and spent the evening getting Guinness and Irish kisses in the Temple Bar area. While I can’t say I fit all of that into these cupcakes, they come pretty damn close. Guinness in the cake, whiskey in the filling, Baileys in the frosting. I put on some Corrs for added ambience. And the kisses came from my husband, who was very supportive of this recipe. “Do you mind drinking up the Guinness I don’t use and then later eating it in a cupcake?” “Uh, ok.” These cupcakes have lots of parts, so in that way they are complicated, but it’s hard to go wrong, so it’s worth it. In fact, if you took all of the ingredients, dumped them in a bowl, and stirred, you could probably just eat that with a spoon and be reasonably satisfied. But if you follow the recipe, you end up with spongy chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate ganache filling and buttercream frosting. Make a little Irish coffee on the side, sit back, and be thankful for St. Patrick. And whiskey, of course. Sláinte!
0 Comments
The morning of my wedding, I found myself seated on the bathroom floor of my hotel room filling flasks with whiskey in the semi-darkness. Brides get married with a variety of secrets to hide. Mine was a backpack full of glasses with our names and wedding date etched on them in the closet with matching flasks that I was now trying to carefully fill without spilling or making much noise to get it all packed before my soon-to-be-husband woke up. If all went well, I wanted to give a surprise whiskey toast after the ceremony. If all did not go well, we would want the whiskey anyway. We had planned a Yosemite wedding for October in the beautiful afternoon autumn light. The government had other plans for us, however. They had closed the national parks as part of the government shutdown, and we had been relocated outside the park. All of our desperate tweeting for them to reopen the government had yet to work, so we had no choice but to sneak a wedding into Yosemite. Nothing says true love like whiskey and Valentine cookies. The cookies are a special recipe from my grandma, but with an added twist of whiskey buttercream frosting that I'm sure Grandpa would have enjoyed. The frosting recipe comes from the delectable flour cookbook by Joanne Chang. And the secret is to whip the hell out of it. I know Lagavulin wants to be tough. The first whiff is like leathery shoes – hello, Pete! He comes on strong, lingers. I know what he’s going for. But – and he would hate me for saying this – he melts quickly. Imagine your favorite hug. Now put that hug inside your throat. There, ahhh. Warm. Happy. Sorry, tough guy, but the act doesn’t last - you just become more friendly and loveable the more I know you. There are certainly other Scotches to be had, but once I have switched to Lag for an evening, I just don’t want anyone else. Lagavulin is a single malt scotch from the Island of Islay. It has the smoky smell of my grandpa - who, ironically, often smelled like Scotch - because it is not afraid of fire. It spends a long time drying over the peat fire in its early stage when it just barley dreaming of being Scotch. Peat (also called Pete in this blog) is a real divider. Some love him. Others can’t stand him. If you can’t stand him, Lag is not for you. Don’t even bother. Leave more for the rest of us. My grandpa’s drink of choice was Scotch on the rocks. It went with the smell of his pipe smoke, the soft, but scratchy feel of his Pendleton shirts, and the look of his cowboy boots, the only shoes he wore out of the house. It was an easy drink to order at the Elk’s lodge, an easy drink for a child granddaughter to make. It fit well in a flask that may or may not be hiding in his cane or boot. And it was conveniently the same color as apple juice just in case he needed to play a trick on his grandsons. Scotch was necessary gear for hunting trips – where as far as we could tell, not much got killed except quite a few bottles of alcohol. I know he must have longed for a drink while spending WWII in a Japanese prison camp. He drank other things – beer and white Russians and he even made his own wine and Kahlua. But I only remember him ordering one drink, whether from a bartender in the “smoking and swearing” section or from “squaw” – that was Grandma. “Scotch on the rocks.” I liked the clink of the ice against the glass, the pale color, the pungent and sweet smell. He liked a kind called Sheep Dip – more for the creative packaging that originated to get the alcohol bottles past the prohibition censors. Grandpa liked to feel he was doing something wrong, that he was a rebel, even though as long as I knew him he could pretty much do as he damn well pleased. At his funeral party out on his lawn, the family stood in a circle and passed around one of his whiskey bottles. Cousins, aunts, maybe even Grandma took a swig from the bottle. My uncle put Grandpa’s picture in the cast on his hand so he could join us – he would not have wanted to miss it. I guess in a way, even before I tasted a drop, the whiskey was already in my veins, already a presence in my memories of time spent with Grandpa in his gun room or relaxing out on the deck in the rare moments when the Portland weather was nice. It was only fitting that the first time I was ever drunk was on whiskey – in Dublin, Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day. Me and whiskey, we’ve been friends ever since. But we knew each other even before we were properly introduced. |
Archives
November 2017
|