FATHER'S DAY PART 2 🍸🍪👨🏻🏫
Drinks, Desserts & Dad
We’ve reached the “sweet spot” of our Father’s Day tribute with this week’s theme, and our Dad’s two favorite things to consume, Drinks & Desserts. And since June is also his birthday month (June 17th), our Father’s Day festivities usually turn into birthday celebrations with plenty of cocktails and sweet treats abound.
BEVERAGE BADDIE
When it comes to adult beverages, our Dad goes hard for Aperol Spritzes and martinis (Larry’s version). And to no surprise of anyone, we are featuring both.
After a long day working in the yard, during a pre-dinner cocktail on one of our hiking trips, or for something to sip on while sitting at the beach listening to Bob Seger and watching the sunset, our Dad enjoys nothing more than a giant Aperol Spritz. Emphasis on GIANT.
To make a spritz fit for our Dad, you first need to find the biggest (almost comically big) wine glass you have, fill it with ice and prosecco, and slowly pour in the Aperol until you reach that beautiful deep (but not too deep) orangey-red color we adore. Stir it up with a straw (or butter knife lol) and Voila! We prefer to drink these with a glass straw, although our Dad likes gulping them straight from the glass.
Side note: We consider topping off an Aperol Spritz with sparkling water offensive. Why water it down?? There is already ice in it for goodness’ sake. 🤦🏻♀️
While his love of a spritz runs deep, for as long as we can remember, our Dad has been known for his martinis, aka “Larry’s Martini”. And like his spritz preference, his martinis are also quite large (but these usually involve a nice long nap afterward).
This is not your typical martini (it’s questionable that we even call it a martini, but we do 🤪). Besides its size, there is no vermouth, no olives, and extra ice cubes are added at the end. To make a martini Larry style, you simply add ice, vodka, and fresh lime juice into a martini shaker and…now here’s the most important part….you must shake it 32 times. Yes, 32 is the magic number. After 32 shakes, the martini is strained into a glass, then you add a few ice cubes and garnish with the carcass of the juiced lime (ends cut off).
We made these LDB martinis as the specialty cocktail for his 70th birthday party, shaking each one 32 times…💪🏻
And while our palates may not have matured enough to enjoy our Dad’s martinis, Jackson sure likes them, and the post-drink nap that follows.
SPECIAL MENTION:
In the last decade or so, our Dad has also started enjoying a bit of whiskey or bourbon over ice. His favorites are Blanton’s Bourbon and Angel’s Envy. But he’ll also go for a little Maker’s Mark or, as he likes to call it, “Marky Mark.”
We all did a blind taste test during COVID, and can’t say we share the love 🤢.
Like many Dads, he also fancies a cold beer in a glass (preferably draft). And when at home after a hike or a day of yard work (and a spritz isn’t readily available), he likes to have himself a Bell’s Oberon with an orange slice. 🍻🍊
SWEETS FOR A SWEET TOOTH
Our Dad has an unparalleled sweet tooth. If it has sugar, he’s in. In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever seen him look at a dessert and utter the words “I’ll pass…”. While he clearly does not discriminate against anything sweet, his kryptonite will always be cookies, ice cream, and peanut M&M’s.
Our Dad’s passion for peanut M&Ms is in his soul. He even pretends to care about watching the Oscars every year because our Mom usually has a bowl of peanut M&Ms as part of the awards show snack spread, which he immediately digs into with the largest of handfuls. If there is a peanut M&M anywhere in his vicinity, he will be eating it.
His “trail mix” on our hiking trips consists of 95% peanut M&Ms with a few nuts and dried fruit thrown in for fun. This was on clear and frankly shocking display when his trail mix baggy spilled open onto the floor of a restaurant in Sardinia, and a sea of colorful peanut M&Ms spread beyond our table towards the confused faces of a neighboring table of strangers, like lava from a volcano. I don’t think I have ever seen a concentration of that many M&Ms in my life. It was as though a glass jar with a sign reading “Can you guess how many candies are in this jar?” fell off a counter, spilling its contents all over a tile floor in dramatic fashion. But, if you’re like Jackson (suck up) and want to give our Dad the benefit of the doubt, the scoop in the M&M bowl on the snack table did grab a lot of M&Ms at one time….sure, Jan….
Now, when it comes to actual desserts and not just candy, our Dad, like most of our family, is a big Cookie Monster. For good reason, his mom made the absolute best chocolate chip pecan cookies in the whole world. Thick, dense, and always stored in a gallon bag in the freezer, where our Dad would grab at least two at a time. When we remake these cookies, they don’t capture the perfection of the batches our Grandma Burns used to make (she just had the magic touch). But don’t get us wrong, this recipe is still 10/10 and always a crowd-pleaser.
His second beloved dessert is good old-fashioned ice cream, or froyo, or gelato, or custard, or malted milkshakes, or Frostys….let’s just call it frozen dairy. So this year, we are combining his cookie cravings with his frozen dairy fixation and surprising him (surprise!) with a homemade chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich for Father’s Day.
The cookie recipe in this is the viral Jaque Torres one we featured in our Valentine’s Digest, but you can use our Grandma Burns’ recipe (just make the cookie larger and flatter), or your favorite/family chocolate cookie recipe instead.
Continuing the frozen dairy theme, our Dad is always down for a milkshake. Last year, when the new Wendy’s Orange Dreamsicle Frosty came out, each time the ad played on TV, he would look on in awe and say, “That sure looks good!” When we’d drive past a Wendy’s, he’d jokingly comment, “Let’s stop and get a Dreamsicle Frosty!” Needless to say, one of his birthday gifts was a Wendy’s Orange Dreamsicle Frosty lol.
He’s also an outstanding milkshake maker. He used to make malted milkshakes for himself for breakfast (lol) and daily for customers while growing up in his family’s restaurant, The Pantry.
So it was only natural that we assigned him as the “Head Milkshake Maker In Charge” during our Thanksgiving Extravaganza of malted milkshakes, smash burgers, fries, and onion rings (in lieu of traditional Turkey and all the fixins’).
Now that we’ve covered drinks and desserts, the only possible thing he could like more than those two is… Drinks that are also Desserts.
Enter, the Hummer. A Hummer is a dessert-worthy cocktail with only three ingredients: Kahlua, rum, and vanilla ice cream. Think “boozy milkshake” — simple, heavy, and delicious. We’ve heard many stories about how our parents loooved to make Hummers back in the day. So we always assumed it was one of those vintage cocktails, like a White Russian or Tequila Sunrise. But upon writing this Digest, we were surprised to learn that the Hummer is actually the Michigan state cocktail! And not well known or served outside the Great Lakes state.
Apparently, like most cocktail lore, the exact origins are debated, with the London Chop House and the Bayview Yacht Club (two Detroit staples) both laying claim to its invention in the late 1960s. While we will never know who really came up with this creamy alcoholic treat, both restaurants still serve it to this day! Maybe there’s a test in our future…😏
For our Dad’s 65th birthday, we got the idea of putting Hummers into cookie shot glasses, a “two-fer” of his favorites, if you will. Unfortunately, nobody has any proof of this, and all videos and pictures of these cookie hummer shots have been lost somewhere in the cloud. While the concept was very cute and aesthetic, we didn’t love the taste of the cookie shot glass; they also leaked. So in the end, we decided we’d rather just have Hummers with a plate of cookies on the side. 🤷🏻♀️
Now, as we wrap up this section, we leave you with a wise quote about Hummers & milkshakes:
“The key for both is high-quality real vanilla ice cream. If you are gonna have a hummer or malted milkshake, it is silly to cut corners on fat and calories. You can quote me on that.”
— Lawrence D. Burns, Ph.D
A new spirit-forward dessert that he has yet to taste, but we know he will go crazy for and wanted to include, is this easy no-churn spiked ice cream. No ice cream maker necessary for this recipe! Simply take heavy whipping cream, condensed milk, and your favorite ice cream flavor additions (in this case caramel, pecans, sea salt, and whiskey), freeze, and you have yourself a delicious ice cream.
If you’re still struggling to find something, the Gift Guide this year includes gifts we’ve given our Dad, plus a few things we plan on getting him this year (Dad, if you’re reading this, stop now!) and recommendations from a few other dads we know.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!
THANKS FOR READING!
Cheers 🥂
Hil & Nat
Don’t forget you can access the entire recipe library with all your favs here.