Dec 2

Dec 2 Holiday Entertaining 2023: Festive Beverages & A Brie Appetizer

I love hosting parties! And while I may not be hosting any parties this year, I make the family party with me. I love this Cranberry Lime Cocktail. It’s fresh, tart, and sweet.

The ingredients are simple, 100% cranberry juice, lime zest and juice, Sprite or your preferred lemon-lime soda, gin, plus limes and cranberries for garnish if you’re feeling fancy.

To make a pitcher, zest and juice one lime into a pitcher. Add cranberry juice and gin (about 1 pt gin to 3-4 parts juice), add ice to the pitcher, and stir. Right before serving top with cold Sprite.

For a single serving, add the cranberry juice, gin, a little bit of lime zest, and a squeeze of lime juice (1/4 or so?) to a frosty cold shaker filled with ice. Shake it all up and add to a lowball glass with fun ice or coupe glass, and top with Sprite for a fun little fizz.

For a fun non-alcoholic version, make this into an old-school sherbet punch!

You’ll use all the same ingredients as the cocktail version, minus the gin.

Add cranberry juice and Sprite into a punch bowl, I got this plastic one at Dollar Tree for $1.25. Add scoops of lime sherbet to the punch mixture and you’re ready to serve with a ladle.

I added in some fancy ice cubes I made by freezing cranberries and lime slices in Sprite in a muffin tin, but there was way too much stuff floating around in the bowl, so I would say either skip the fancy ice or set out cups with a scoop of sherbet and let people add the punch to the sherbet cup instead of adding the sherbet to the punch.

I garnished my punch cups with a lime wedge, but that’s 100% optional.

Now, a party (even if it’s a forced family party on a Tuesday) isn’t complete without at least one good snack. If you’re only going to have one snack, it should be a cheese snack.

There is a restaurant in town, The Tavern, that has an incredible brie appetizer, so I decided to make my own version using puff pastry.

I don’t like the texture of the Brie rind, so I cut most of it off, but you do you. Spread out one sheet of puff pastry, and spread a layer of honey on the whole sheet. Add the brie to the center of the pastry and cover the brie with more honey, brown sugar, and chopped toasted nuts, they use almonds, but my brother is allergic so pecans work well too. Wrap the puff pastry around the cheese and pinch to seal. Brush the pastry with an egg wash and bake at 350 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes or until the crust is golden and the cheese is melty.

Let the cheese puff situation sit for a few minutes so you don’t burn your mouth on ooey gooey cheese lava.

I served it with Honeycrisp apple slices and cinnamon sugar toast slices, but crackers, pretzels, bread, or toast points would also be great!

Now for some behind-the-scenes drama. When I put the brie in the oven I started melting butter for the cinnamon sugar toast and I accidentally turned off the oven. So when I checked on the brie after 25 minutes it was just sitting and melting slowly in a warm but not on oven. Fuck! It had started leaking, but I turned the oven back on and crossed my fingers.

After another 20ish minutes, I went back and the leaked bits were burnt to a crisp and it was smoking. I turned off the oven, kept the door shut for a bit, opened the kitchen door, and then took it out.

I thought for sure it was a lost cause, but after peeling away the burnt sugar and cheese, it looked OK. The cheese was a little stiff and not as gooey as I wanted it to be, but it didn’t catch on fire!