White Christmas Cocktail

This White Christmas Cocktail is a super quick, fun and delicious drink that’s perfect for the holidays! It can easily be made vegan by using coconut milk in place of the cream.

Yet another drink! This one is more festive and holiday-ish than the Grapefruit Tea that I recently posted.

I’m loving drinks this (pandemic) year because they don’t take forever to test. It’s hard to test a batch of cookie dough 16 different ways, one cookie at a time when your 3-year-old is demanding you hold his tractor in one hand and his bunny rabbit in the other.

Just basic ingredients

When I first started looking at Christmas cocktails, a lot of them called for ingredients I don’t have and didn’t feel like buying just for a drink. Peppermint vodka, vanilla schnapps, and other stuff I’d never heard of.

So here’s one with pretty basic ingredients. You just need amaretto, vodka and cream to make the base of the cocktail.

You probably already have vodka and if you don’t have amaretto, it’s totally worth getting. Not just for cocktails but also for baking.

Amaretto is absolutely amazing in baked recipes with peaches, apricots or any kind of stone-fruit!

And to make it pretty and extra delicious, it’s topped off with shaved white chocolate and nutmeg.

If you don’t have either of those, I don’t think they’re totally necessary to the deliciousness of this drink. If you already have them at home or have a use for them otherwise, then definitely use them.

For another easy Christmas drink that uses just basic ingredients, check out the Baileys Hot Chocolate I posted on Texanerin this week!

The cream

I prefer heavy cream but whipping cream is also fine for a lighter version. See below for vegan options!

Milk would be a no, though. It’s much too thin.

The booze

I have to admit that I used whatever random brands of amaretto and vodka we had sitting around. We don’t buy expensive stuff and this cocktail was still incredibly delicious.

So this is my way of saying you don’t need fancy stuff. Any mid-level brands would work. Although you might not want to use the absolute cheapest brands you find.

Vegan version

I doubt I have many vegan followers over here as I post the occasional meat recipe. But for the few of you that do follow, find this recipe through Pinterest or that have to avoid dairy, I always try to offer that option.

You can use coconut milk in place of the dairy cream. You can taste the coconut a little bit but it’s not at all as strong as I thought it’d be. At least with the brand I used, it was just a bit of coconut. The main flavor was amaretto.

I haven’t tried it but I think coconut cream would also work. If making the vegan version, it’s extra important to shake your ingredients instead of just mixing them up in the glass. I

f you don’t do this, you’ll get little bits of coconut cream in your drink. It was not a very pleasant drinking experience. 😉

If there’s another cream sub that works the same way as heavy cream or coconut milk, I’m sure it’d work well in this drink. I know there’s soy cream but since I’m allergic to that, I haven’t tried it.

The white chocolate on top is really mostly just to give the appearance of snow. You can totally omit it but if you want to use white chocolate, be sure to use vegan white chocolate.

I also usually try to offer a paleo option but since amaretto has sugar in it, there’s no way to paleoify this recipe.

No cocktail shaker needed

I don’t have a cocktail shaker and wondered if I really needed one for this recipe. Then I read this article and decided I should really shake the ingredients together instead of just mixing them in the glass. The main reason is that shaking the cream creates volume, which is important for this recipe.

I can understand why you might not want to do the following if you have company over but if it’s just you and a buddy… why not.

I used a stainless steel water bottle. You could also use a mason jar or a normal jar. 

Then I used a small sieve or a tea strainer to pour out the drink. You could just dump it all into the glass and scoop out the ice. No cocktail shaker needed!

You don’t even need to use ice if you don’t have it. Just chill the bottles first or make your drink and then chill that. Or put the ingredients in the shaker and chill that.

If you’re wondering why someone wouldn’t just use the ice, for most of us who live outside of the US and Canada, it’s not normal to have ice makers in our freezer. And at least in Europe, it’s not usual to put ice in your drinks.

So I’m going to venture to say that a lot of folks don’t use their precious little freezer space for ice. There’s your useless bit of info for the day. 😉

If you try this White Christmas Cocktail out, please let me know what you think! I absolutely love feedback.

Print

White Christmas Cocktail

Prep Time

5 mins

 

Course: Drinks

Cuisine: American

Keyword: christmas cocktail

Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) heavy cream, whipping cream or for vegan, use coconut milk
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) amaretto
• 3 tablespoons (1.5 ounces) vodka
• grated white chocolate (use vegan white chocolate for vegan)
• grated nutmeg

Instructions

1. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and pour in the cream, amaretto and vodka.
2. Shake vigorously for about a minute.
3. Strain and pour into 2 cocktail glasses.
4. Grate some white chocolate over the top and then a little nutmeg over that.

Tagged as: amaretto, coconut milk, nutmeg, vodka, white chocolate