Drunken Eggs Are a Great Seasonal Answer to Jelly Shots
The holidays give us carte blanche for reckless drinking and sugar – bonus points if you can make things easier. Gelatin shots may be the remedy of choice for millennia for these two substances, but like Pete Shweddy before me , I prefer a festive ball.
Maybe I’m the only one in this, but the jelly shots are more like “Independence Day” than “Christmas”. Christmas calls for pastry-like pastries, as well as subtle, work-appropriate drunkenness and jelly shots, are too conspicuous. The booze balls are also insanely easy to make and don’t require baking, refrigeration, or aging, which means you can make them for the dinner you forgot you agreed to attend. Rum and bourbon balls are a classic, but you can move on to other types of ethanol (I used gin) by following this basic pattern:
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups waffle biscuits, crumbled
- 1 cup ground nuts
- 1 cup icing sugar + more to cover
- 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons of alcohol
- 3 tablespoons honey or other sweetener syrup
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, if needed (unless your alcohol is gin)
Start with 2 1/2 cups cookie crumbs and sift dry ingredients in a large bowl. Dissolve the syrup in your drink, then add it to the dry ingredients and stir everything together until it forms a cohesive form. If the dough is too sticky to work, add more cookie crumbs.
Take small, one-inch-thick pieces of the substance, roll them into balls, and toss them in powdered sugar (or cocoa powder) to coat. Store in an airtight container; they become more aromatic every day.
Regardless of which drink you choose, the main thing is to match it with waffles and nuts. Plain vanilla waffles pair well with any liquor, but experiment and get creative. All the combinations below seem pretty good to me:
- Bourbon + Pecans + Milk Chocolate Coated Waffles
- Gin + Macadamia Nuts + Lemon Waffles (Awesome in the photo above)
- Rum + pecans and roasted coconut + vanilla waffles
- Rye + almonds + ginger waffles
Be careful, though, these small spheres will have a strong taste of the spirit you make them out of, so keep them away from the little ones or those who don’t absorb them. Stealth ethanol is good, but surprise ethanol is not fun.