Spookies!

6:06 AM Sunday morning, pouring rain. Sounds perfect for a sleep in, right? Wrong! Time for breakfast and baking. It's sugar cookie Sunday!

Once I put something on my baking to do list it haunts me and yells at me in my brain until I make it. Some items are on my To Do-one day in the future if I happen to have all the ingredients and a special occasion to fulfill-List and others are on my To Do-as soon as humanly possible as my brain will give me no rest until said recipe adventure has been tested-List. Trust me when I say it's a debilitating character trait. It's 6:30 on Sunday morning and I'm elbow deep in sugar cookies. I'm also face masking. Lucky I don't have a roommate, they would hate me. A white-clay faced, sweat panted baking monster who listens to Norah Jones on repeat for hours on end at the crack of dawn. I'd probably hate them for the very reason that they are not OK with that.

The SPOOKY cookie cutters that sara got me for my birthday after finding out the only shape i had was a circle. For a girl that bakes a lot i have an embarrassingly pitiful collection of cookie cutters. I decided the cookies, being Halloween themed should be called SPOOKIES. Spooky cookies. Get it? I used the sugar cookie recipe off the back of the Wiltons cookie cutter packaging. IMHO (that's geek speak for 'in my humble opinion') any brand recipes result in the best baked goods. Think Rice Krispie squares and Kraft peanut butter cookies, both recipes right off the package make delicious treats. I whipped up a batch and went to the gym then came home and decorated them. Viola! Halloweenified. Spooky right? Distributing to any suckers that'll take em.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! May you rot your teeth with sweets and get your pants scared off you by a horror movie or two.

Earl Gray MarTEAni

I like tea. I like booze. Until recently, booze and tea has never mixed in my world. I was minding my own business, looking for something to drink with dinner and WHAM the drink menu at Sip (on Granville in Vancouver) has Earl Gray MarTEAni listed on it. I read the ingredients, make a confused face, show it to Sara who returns my confused face and ask the waitress what she has to say about it. She gives it a favorable review. I ask if you can taste the gin. She says no. I ask what the Egg Whites are all about and she says volume and frothiness. I want to ask her about salmonella but don’t dare, she is snotty enough as it is. I order the drink. It gets delivered and I tentatively take a sip. DELICIOUS. I let Sara take a drink and she makes yummy noises as well. It tastes like boozy, frosty, lemony, sweet cup of earl gray tea. Those adjectives don’t even do it justice. It is nothing you have ever tasted before. Shockingly, the gin doesn’t taste at all ginny. I always associate gin with the smell and taste of Christmas trees but this drink had none of that.

I was haunted by this drink for the next few days so I did some research. The Earl Gray MarTEAni was created by Audrey Saunders at NYC’s Pegu Club. It is super simple to make.

I realized I would need a special occasion to make it so I immediately went to work convincing my sister that she should make it her feature martini at her housewarming/engagement party. She agreed. I was ecstatic. This is how the process went:

We poured a 60 pounder of gin into a large glass pitcher. To that we added 16 earl gray tea bags (Twinings) and let it sit over night. We purchased the rest of the ingredients we would need for the concoction and on Party Day we premixed almost everything we would need into a pitcher. We made a test martini before any of the guests arrived and we proclaimed it Delicious. I continued to taste test these drinks all night to ensure quality control. We had everyone drinking the EGMs and yummy noises were coming from every camp. I did hear a few exclaim they were a bit on the sweet site, but they are probably just complainers by nature so I ignored them.

Here’s the recipe:

• 1 1/2 ounces Earl Gray Gin Infusion 
• 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
• 1 egg white

Fill a cocktail shaker two-thirds full of ice and add the gin infusion, lemon juice, simple syrup and egg white. Shake for approximately 15 seconds. Strain into a martini glass. Drink. Exclaim delight. Repeat.