South Twelfth’s great gourmet office drink recipe contest: we have a winner!
Last month, we sponsored a contest to see who could come up with the best — or at least most plausible — recipe for an exotic beverage using only items commonly found in office kitchens. You know: sugar, cocoa mix, instant coffee, stuff like that. You can read the original post here.
Well, we got so many replies that we are now just finishing sorting through all of them and deciding on a winner. There were so many great entries we could probably throw them all together and use them as the basis for a quickie stunt memoir (working title: You’re the Coffee Mate Now, Dog: One Man’s Year Making Heated Sprite-Based Drinks in an Office and What He Learned Resultantly About Life and Love and Also His Family), then use the advance to finally retire from office work, thus freeing us up to spend the rest of our days engaging in more meaningful pursuits, such as posting images of girls with accordions and handsome liberals to Tumblr and making friends with “microcelebrities.”
In the meantime, we are pleased to report our results now.
Honorable mention goes to Ms. Debra DeNoyelles of The Soap Factory. Her Incidental Table of Appetites was so shockingly decadent we frankly doubted it could even be be made. Well, we were wrong. Heated Coke steeped in tea and mixed with cream tastes much better than you would assume. Here is Ms. DeNoyelle’s full recipe:
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Incidental Table of Appetites
Element I
Mix one packet of pepper with one packet of sugar, reserve. Melt 6 Hershey’s kisses in the microwave. Drizzle over the already crisped 10 oz. of Neuske’s thick-sliced applewood-smoked bacon you retrieve from your backpack. Sprinkle pepper/sugar mix over bacon while chocolate is still warm.
Element II
While element I is cooling, place one unwrapped peppermint candy and 12 oz. of Coke in a large coffee mug. Heat in the microwave at 100% for 3 minutes.
Steep two Earl Grey tea bags in said Coke for 4 minutes. (Check temperature, it may need another minute in the micro at this point.) Add 1 T of creamer (liquid) while whisking rapidly with plastic fork. Just before serving, sprinkle the surface with a tiny bit of black pepper.
Procedure
Have one Diet Coke and one bottled water at the ready. Serve Element II with a chaser, alternating between the Diet Coke and the water. Follow the exquisite apéritif with chocolate covered bacon.
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Our first place prize goes to Mrs. Cyn Collins of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, for her delightful Spanish coffee-styled beverage. It is simple, elegant and delicious. It will surely, as she promises, get you fired…up.
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You’re Fired…Up!
Ingredients:
Patron Citronge (orange liquer tequila) or whiskey, laced with cinnamon and cayenne pepper, brought in a flask
Hot Coffee
4 Tablespoons, or 2 packets Instant hot cocoa mix
3 sugar packets
¼ cup (approximate) Half and Half (liquid)
2 peppermint candies
4 Hersey’s Kisses
Crush the peppermint candies. Mix ½ crushed peppermint candy with sugar packets in a bowl and set aside. Wet the rim of your favorite ceramic coffee mug with the spiced Patron, and rub it in the candy-sugar mixture. Ignite the rim with your cigarette lighter to carmelize the sugar/candy.
Mix Half and Half with the instant hot cocoa mix. Drop 3 Kisses into the mix. Microwave for 2 -3 minutes, stirring ½ way through to mix the melted kisses in. Meanwhile, shave (or crush) remaining kiss and set aside. Pour ½ cup hot coffee into your carmelized sugar-laced mug, add a few jiggers of your spiced Patron Citronge, then top with the hot cocoa mix. Stir. Sprinkle the shaved kiss and crushed peppermint on top. Enjoy!
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Congratulations to both! Debra and Cyn will both receive gift certificates to Office Depot.
