Who Say’s Santa Wants Milk with His Cookies? A brown butter-washed bourbon sour and shortbread cookies to match!

 keep seeing cocktails using fat-washed alcohol and I had to try it for myself. I used brown-butter to fat-wash a bottle of Makers Mark, and I’m pretty happy with the outcome. * Note: it makes the bourbon pretty mellow so I will be using something a bit hotter in the future. The brown butter imparts a nutty and buttery flavor to the bourbon.
I couldn't just throw out all of this beautiful bourbon soaked butter so I obviously had to make cookies with it. I used the Scotch Shortbread recipe from The Joy of Cooking. If you like your shortbread really short then you might want to add a little extra flour or some corn starch because the butter had a little extra liquid due to the bourbon soak.

This would be the perfect cocktail to serve at a Holiday party along with the shortbread cookies. I will personally be setting one of these baby’s out Christmas Eve for Santa Clause, I feel like he’ll probably be in need of a good cocktail.

Santa’s Bourbon Sour

2oz. Brown butter washed bourbon
3/4oz. fresh lemon juice
1/2oz. Mulled spice simple syrup (make mulled spice “tea”, use spiced water to make regular simple syrup in a 1:1 ratio)
4-5 drops of orange bitters
1 large egg white

Garnish with orange peel stars

Combine all of the ingredients to a cocktail shaker and dry shake for at least 90 seconds, add ice and briefly shake till chilled. Pour into a coupe glass and garnish with orange peel stars.

Bourbon-washed Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies

3/4 cup Bourbon-washed brown butter, softened
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
11/2 cups all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 300F. Combine the first four ingredients in a bowl and beat. Stir in the flour. Kneed until blended and then press into an 8” square pan. Pierce with a fork and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until edges become golden brown. Cut into bars while still warm and cool completely before serving.