Max and Sam’s Holiday Bourbon Cookies

After making two batches of cookies today my brother and I were in a bit of an experimental mood and hybridized the two recipes plus a few new “secret ingredients”. Here’s the recipe we came up with:

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 shot Bourbon

Cream together the butter, sugars and a fine Bourbon of your choice. Suit the amount of bourbon to your taste. Mix:

2 cup flower
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, cloves)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cup crushed cornflakes
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 ounces finely ground chocolate chunks

Add the cream. Ball and bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 minutes in a convection oven or about 10-12 minutes in a more conventional oven.

You may also add a small amount of oats (maybe a 1/2 cup to a cup) if you favor them. The chocolate and nuts are intentionally short in the recipe. The traditional bourbon desserts (bourbon balls and bourbon fudge) are all heavily chocolate-based and it’s hard to say no to chocolate, but we wanted something where the bourbon was given more room to flourish and chocolate can overwhelm the other flavors. In a similar fashion we didn’t want this to be a very nutty cookie because that wouldn’t work as well with the bourbon, but a hint of nut works well here. On the other hand the cornflakes serve to add both a non-nutty crunch as well as to enhance and interplay with the corn taste of a good bourbon.

Without being told that bourbon is used in the flavoring an average person should taste a wide variety of tastes that he/she might not be able to place, but on the order of a good blend of traditional holiday flavors. A bourbon lover should appreciate the interplay of bourbon and non-bourbon flavors. The bourbon for the most part shouldn’t overpower or burn, but you could probably add enough to the recipe to do that if that was your intention.