Pomegranate Manhattan

Whether the holidays drive you to drink or the drinks are just part of the fun of celebrating, this is a good cocktail recipe to have on hand. I received a sample of PAMA Pomegranate Liqueur and was interested in several ideas from the accompanying recipe booklet. A PAMA margarita or martini would have been nice, but the thought of pomegranate flavor with bourbon in a Manhattan was something I had to try. First I tasted a sip of the PAMA liqueur on its own, and it was very much like pomegranate juice. This is not a sweet or syrupy liqueur. The flavor is very well-balanced, and it adds nice color to a finished cocktail.

A classic Manhattan includes bourbon, sweet vermouth, and bitters and is garnished with lemon peel and a maraschino cherry. The recipe in the PAMA booklet, replaced the vermouth with PAMA, omitted the bitters, and added a splash of soda water. I decided to create a sort of hybrid mix of that recipe and the classic. A cocktail pitcher was filled with ice, bourbon, PAMA, and bitters were added, the mixture was stirred until chilled, it was poured over ice in two small glasses, and it was topped with sparkling water and garnished.

I’ve always been a bourbon fan, and I was very happy with the way its flavor mingled with that of pomegranate. I used angostura bitters, and just a couple of dashes added a distinctive note. I can imagine a lot of delicious uses of PAMA liqueur, and I’ll definitely try the margarita eventually, but for a sophisticated twist on a classic cocktail this pomegranate Manhattan would be hard to beat.

Pomegranate Manhattan
2 ounces bourbon
1 1/2 ounces PAMA Pomegranate Liqueur
2 dashes angostura bitters
Sparkling water
Lemon peel and maraschino cherries such as Silver Palate brand

-Fill a cocktail pitcher with ice. Pour bourbon, PAMA, and bitters over ice, and add dashes of bitters. Stir until chilled. Strain cocktail into two small glasses with ice and top with sparkling water. Garnish each with lemon peel and a cherry.

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Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

At Christmas time, I baked several kinds of cookies to share with family and friends. I had a list of all the cookies I wanted to try, but I only got to about half of them. These chocolate covered cherry cookies were on that other half of the list. When I ran out of time in December, I started thinking about a baking list for Valentine’s Day and put these cookies at the top of it. I saw these delicious looking treats and used the recipe found on A Good Appetite.

They are thumb-print cookies with half a maraschino cherry tucked into the indentation with chocolate spooned on top. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I located some all-natural maraschino cherries, Silver Palate brand, at Whole Foods. They have no artificial colors and no preservatives, and they taste great. Simple cookie, great ingredients, what could go wrong? Turns out, I nearly completely failed at making these cookies. My melted chocolate and sweetened condensed milk mixture must have been too runny. When I took the cookies out of the oven, it had practically disappeared. Notice the bottom right photo below. That is what failure looks like.

Not willing to give up so easily, I decided to let the cookies cool while I considered my options. I thought I could sneekily re-top them with melted milk chocolate and no one would ever know. My plan was to send these to my nieces for Valentine’s Day, so I went with milk chocolate for the final topping instead of semisweet. That chocolate topping worked ok, and the cookies were brought back from the brink. I can’t wait to find out if my nieces enjoyed the cookies or if they could taste the bitterness of near failure.

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