The Pantry with Ryan Chetiyawardana is a monthly column in which the award-winning bartender and bar owner shares how to use unexpected ingredients in easy-to-make home cocktails.
There are a few ingredients you miss when they are out of season (don’t get seduced by year-round strawberries; they taste like acidity and sadness). We are rightfully at the whims of nature, which delivers us produce at its peak. But other foods we miss are more attached to calendar moments than the weather – and although the temptation might be to enjoy them year-round, I suggest they wouldn’t carry their magic if we could get them all the time. I adore mince pies, and the build up to Christmas is marked by my sheer greed. I jump around town like a sugar-high Pokemon collector assessing the best versions – but they would lose their sheen if they weren’t confined to December.
The same goes for hot cross buns. I tie the excitement of spring and Easter to their arrival, and I will giddily seek out versions – both supermarket and fancy – and enjoy them in all their guises. Hot cross bun bacon rolls are amazing, and I’m okay with whatever other perversions marketeers subject them to – as long as they don’t get folded together with chocolate, peanut butter, matcha and the like, I’m likely to give them a go.
All this means a few stale buns slip through the cracks. Although giving them a spritz of water and a quick toast (and stuffing them with bacon) is a reasonable option, they can be a wonderful addition to your cocktail repertoire given their unique spice and citrus accents.
The family of milk punch cocktails (not to be confused with the clarified milk punches that are the mainstay of cocktail bars around the world just now – the variety typically served sans garnish in a thin rocks glass over a clear cube of ice) are some of the oldest drinks around. And though they might sound like boozy milkshakes, they carry a complexity and should be more popular. An ancient drink with a rich history in the British Isles, milk punch also found huge popularity in New Orleans where it is usually made with bourbon and features heavily in bars across the famous cocktail city. This version keeps the bourbon but accents the milk with the features of a hot cross bun. You could serve it hot, but it’s a surprisingly refreshing cocktail – and perfect as the sun starts to creep back into daily life!
Hot cross milk punch
Makes 1 cocktail
Ingredients
1 hot cross bun
250ml whole milk
60ml bourbon
10ml sugar syrup
Orange wedge, to serve
Fresh nutmeg, grated, to serve
Method
To make the milk, cut a hot cross bun into small cubes and toast in the oven until it starts to smell aromatic. While it is warming, add the milk to a pan and gently warm (it shouldn’t get near a boil). Remove from the heat, add the toasted hot cross bun pieces and stir. Allow to cool, then pass through a sieve, cheesecloth or a jam bag. Decant into a clean bottle and refrigerate until needed.
Shake 75ml hot cross bun milk, bourbon and sugar syrup with ice cubes, then strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Cap with more crushed ice, then garnish with a straw, a wedge of orange and a grating of fresh nutmeg.
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