Welcome to our kick off for 2023’s Halloween Cocktail Season! This year we’re upping our game and using some new techniques that will impress all the ghosts and ghouls at your parties. And it isn’t just a bunch of Hocus Pocus, because this year is all about the Sanderson Sisters from Disney’s Hocus Pocus*. Leading things off, is Mary Sanderson. While she may not have enjoyed a Clark bar, we thought her liking of chocolate might be improved by a bit of coffee and some cold vanilla ice cream.
Hocus Pocus Cocktails: Mary Sanderson
Mary Sanderson’s cocktail is nutty, chocolatey, boozy, creamy, and coffee laden. It’s basically a chocolatey dessert in a glass. The warmth of booze at the start is nutty with plenty of sweet coffee notes coming through. The chocolate emerges in the middle before the creaminess of the ice cream gets involved. The creaminess takes over it starts to cool, becoming something of a sweet, creamy coffee with a nice nutty mocha character. And just like Mary, this cocktail can look like a bit of a mess.
Drink Notes & Recommendations
Mary Sanderson’s cocktail is more powerful than it initially suggest. Done in the style of an affogato, the hot cocktail elements are poured over the ice cream, unlocking both the creaminess of the ice cream and some of the aromatic elements of the spirits. With that in mind, let’s have a quick refresher on the impact of warmer temperatures on alcohol.
First, warm alcohol will seem stronger. This is why liquor from the freezer seems smoother. If you find the alcohol notes too strong when you first pour this (I happen to like them), then feel free to give it a stir with the swizzle to better incorporate and moderate the alcohol notes. Secondly, while chilling the glass can help improve the temperature aspects of this drink, we encourage you to inspect any glass you’re going to use closely before doing that. Any small imperfections or cracks can become stress points when you pour the hot liquid in. This difference in temperature can cause fractures or cracks to appear in your glassware which present a potentially safety risk for you and your guests.
To achieve the higher temperatures, we’ll talk more about the Bartender’s Bain Marie below, but before that lets cover the ingredients first:
- Old Tub Bourbon – We picked Old Tub Bourbon for Jim’s wonderfully peanuty profile. This was to emphasize some of the interior of the Clark bar* that Mary bites into. Regular Jim Beam White Label or even Jim Beam Bonded will work well here as well.
- Mr. Black Coffee Liqueur – We used Mr. Black here, and recommend it. If you can’t find it, consider Caffe Borghetti first, a local coffee liquor, or Kahlua if you must (you may want to consider adjusting down on the amount of this due to sweetness if you go this route – it will also add a bit of rum flavor).
- DeKuyper Creme de Cacao – We wanted this to carry chocolate flavors like the outside of the Clark bar and reflect Mary’s like of dark chocolate. Feel free to use your favorite chocolate liqueur here.
- Angostura Cacao Bitters – The bittersweet, slightly funky chocolate flavor these impart works as a nice foil to all the sweetness here, while adding a bit more chocolate. You can find them at Amazon*, but you might be able to find them in your local area cheaper.
- Vanilla Ice Cream – I recommend a super premium like Haagen Daz here to emphasize the creaminess, but you can use anything you like. We used Kirkland’s for our testing.
Bartender’s Bain Marie
For most drinks, ice is added to exchange heat with the liquid (while also changing some of the strength through dilution). This is the easiest way to chill liquid through contact. To add heat, you can’t add ice, but would instead need to add hot water to the drink (again this is the most efficient exchange of heat) or find another way to apply heat to the mixture. Obviously, hot water and ice cream are obviously a bad mix, so how to get around it? Enter the Bartender’s Bain Marie (or water bath if you want to be less fancy sounding).
Created by Jeffrey Morgenthaler, the technique works as follows:
- Combine ingredients in the smaller side of your shaking tins.
- Fill the larger side of the tins using hot water to 1/2 to 2/3s full (an electric kettle can be effective here).
- Float the smaller side of the tin in the larger tin.
- Stir to warm the liquid (anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes as desired)
- Remove the smaller tin, and pour into the desired receptacle.
By using this technique, it allows you to add heat to the drink without adding dilution. Finally, I want to cover why we want to use this method, as opposed to directly heating the drink in a pan. The reason is that water baths are easy to make and provide a gentler, less direct heat than your stove. Sure your stove can work, but that’s an extra step.
Glassware and Swizzles
While we’ve used a stemless, large Martini glass for Mary Sanderson’s cocktail, you could easily use a double rocks, oversized coupe, or snifter. This glass choice is more dependent on the ability to hold about 3 oz of ice cream and 3.5 oz of booze than any particular shape. So don’t worry too much, and use whatever you have or enjoy.
We also recommend these fun Skeleton Hand Swizzle, which are really well made for both stirring and adding a little bit of spookiness to your drink. You can find them at Amazon*.
Preparation for Parties:
To keep this one ready for a party, you can use a small crock pot set to low, or use a sous vide* to heat a bottle to the low 120s. Heat proof gloves can give you an added layer of protection if you’re feeling uncomfortable. Simply pour 3.5 oz of the mixture over the ice cream in glasses to serve.
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