The holidays are upon us now, which for most means spending more time cozied up with the family. Whether your love them or hate them, enjoying their company can be greatly improved with a classy winter cocktail.
Head barman Nelson Navasero from Vancouver’s PiDGiN restaurant and bar was kind enough to share with us his recipe for a Gingerbread Flip. What constitutes a flip cocktail can vary slightly, but generally most are made with rum and a whole egg to create a thicker, frothier texture to the drink. Before flips were made with eggs, they were mixed in the 1600s with a glowing, red-hot iron to create the signature frothy texture and usually featured beer as an ingredient. This recipe doesn’t use a hot iron—sorry if we got your hopes up.
Navasero, who has fond childhood memories of icing gingerbread men as kid, says his Gingerbread Flip is more of an after-dinner drink that could either pair well with dessert or be a dessert on its own. Most of the ingredients are on the sweeter side of things, but he balances this out with a dollop of tangy yogurt. Navasero says his gingerbread syrup is mostly made of what you might expect to find in a gingerbread man recipe minus the flour, and the cocktail overall was inspired by his favorite holiday cookie.
“I wanted to go with [a ginger-molasses cookie] flavor profile,” Navasero says. “I thought it really fit the holiday season with its warming spices, and flips are close to eggnog, which gives it a wintery feel.”
Ingredients:
Gingerbread Flip
1 ½ ounces brandy
½ ounce Grand Marnier
½ ounce gingerbread syrup (recipe follows)
1 whole egg
Dollop of plain yogurt
Gingerbread Syrup
8 ounces ginger juice (from peeled and juiced ginger)
8 ounces brown sugar
4 ounces molasses
1 tablespoon of ground cloves
½ tablespoon allspice
½ cinnamon stick
Pinch of black pepper (optional)
Directions:
To make gingerbread syrup, add cloves, allspice, cinnamon and black pepper to ginger juice in a pan on low heat, and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain juice and add brown sugar and molasses. Stir until dissolved.
To make the Gingerbread Flip cocktail, pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Shake well without ice for 7 seconds. Add ice to cocktail shaker and shake well. Fine strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with grated orange zest and ginger.
