So I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater

[venta]

Lots of people have been doing a 25-days-of-Christmas thing, answering a different question each day, and I've been enjoying reading their answers. I haven't been doing it myself, because I've already banged on endlessly about Christmas.

Yesterday's question was "What's your view on eggnog?" which is largely irrelevant if you live in the UK. I claimed (commenting on strange_complex's LJ) that I liked eggnog. But I definitely haven't had any recently, and in a post answering a similar question in 2008 I claimed I'd never had it at all.

I went to look at Wikipedia to find out what it actually was and then got confused. If it's made with whipped eggs, and served hot, why don't the eggs cook? Er, apparently it is not served hot.

I don't appear to have a clue what I'm talking about.

Mostly, what I know about eggnog is that it makes me lapse into Eric Cartman songs[*] (rarely a good thing).

However, it turns out that there are (at least) two kinds of eggsnog. One which is basically a cold milkshake with whipped eggwhites (and beaten eggyolks) in it, and one which is more like a very thin custard which can be served hot or cold.

While other people were writing on their LJ's along the lines of "who would want to drink runny custard when you could have mulled wine instead?", I was thinking wow! Runny custard! And a licence to drink it! With brandy! Win!

So, BBC website to the rescue again with a recipe. Well, that looks simple enough. 2 pints of milk and 6 eggs "serves 4-6", so that sounds like a one-egg quantity will be enough for me to verify whether I like it.

Bugger, we don't have any brandy. Maybe rum would work? We don't have any rum. What sort of a ridiculously abstemious commisariat am I running here? The situation was fortunately easily resolved, though I got unacceptably rained on in the process.

So! Eggnog. Beat egg, sugar and milk with vanilla, make custard-like substance in saucepan. Put brandy in glass[**], add custard, ignore instructions to dust with cocoa and dust with nutmeg instead.



Er, yeah. It looks like a glass of custard.

Slightly curdled custard, if we're dead honest. Some of the brandy floated up to the top of the drink, and sat on the surface like a slightly baleful scum. Just beneath the surface, the texture was definitely not as... smooth as it had been.

Anyway, I was busy wrapping presents and I drank my eggnog while I did that. It was... fine. A bit much, by the end of the half-pint, to be honest. Maybe I should have stirred it, as mouthfuls seemed variably very custardy or very brandy-y. A skin formed on the surface, which didn't really help with the consistency.

I had been intending to try the other, cold, whipped-egg kind (if I could work out how to scale down the massive quantites involved in most recipes). But actually... with its eggs and cream I suspect it'll also be a bit much. I may well not bother. Unless there are any other curious people, who want to come round for an eggnog party.

In conclusion: I don't dislike eggnog, but everyone who said they'd much rather have mulled wine for their seasonal festive hot beverage was very probably right.

[*] In the well-over-a-decade since I heard that song I've always been far too scared to google to try and find out what, exactly, Swiss Colony Beef Log might mean. You can never tell with South Park. It turns out it's all perfectly safe and suitable for a family audience. Who knew?

[**] The recipe wanted me to put fresh cherries in, too. Which funnily enough, I don't have around in December. Also, I forgot. Plus, really! This is eggnog. Some minor 5-a-day concession isn't really going to make it a health drink.

Comments

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it took me until this year to consider doing so!

I routinely shove gluts of raspberries, tomatoes, chillies etc from the garden into the freezer; and I've diced economy-sized bags of peppers down into conveniently shake-straight-into-wok-from-frozen freezer bags ever since I was a student - but for some reason freezing citrus fruit never occurred to me.

Maybe it's one of these things like pizza-toast - not a original idea, but one that is repeatedly invented by individuals ;)

A note on the citrus slices though - it seems very efficient space-wise to lay them out on a sheet of *something* when freezing (because the sheets can be stacked - but grease proof paper is a bad choice of material, because it does manage to soak up the juice before it freezes, meaning that you have to try and peel off frozen paper that has tried to fuse itself to the fruit. I plan to get hold of some of those silicone baking sheets before I do this again!