I first discovered Cooking Comically back in divinity school, and I’ve been using Tyler Capps’s fun, simple recipes for quite a while. One of his more recent, a crockpot apple butter described as “Fall in a Jar,” immediately grabbed my attention for several reasons:

(1) The traditional “fall seasonings” (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, brown sugar) are basically my favorite flavor profile ever. They’re the backbone of the family pumpkin bread recipe, they’re a key part of my chili recipe, and from September through November, they’re what my house smells like all the time.

(2) The recipe has honeycrisp apples, which are in a perpetual duel in my heart against pink ladies for the best apples ever. (Side note: every apple with “delicious” in the name is guilty of false advertising.)

And most critical for this blog, (3) it’s got bourbon in it.

Just as I do with cocktail bourbons, I go back and forth on my favorite cooking bourbons. Of course, it’s kind of a waste to cook with really expensive liquors, so I never use anything above mid-tier. As with cocktails, you always want a bourbon whose flavor profile somehow complements what you’re doing, and there are a lot of choices out there depending on what you’re preparing:
Smoked Maple Knob Creek has been a key ingredient in my chili recipe for years because of how its smokiness and sharp initial bite interplay with the spicy habaneros and sweet honey of the chili.
Rebel Yell Small Batch and Jim Beam Devil’s Cut bring a nice contrasting spiciness to sweeter dishes like my girlfriend’s blackberry reduction.
And a nice more neutral bourbon like Two Star or Buffalo Trace is perfect for bourbon whipped cream, but a sweeter bourbon like Makers or Winchester could also work.
And, of course, you’re not touching my St. Augustine for any of that— remember, cook with mid-tier spirits or lower! Save the good sipping bourbon for sipping!

For that reason, I decided to go with Buffalo Trace for the Fall in a Jar recipe, and it is outstanding. Because the fall seasonings are so strong, the more neutral character of the Buffalo Trace allows them to shine while still offering that little bourbon kick. (Of course, I also tripled the bourbon content, but hey, booze blog, right?) The recipe works great on biscuits, but my personal preference is to stir it into vanilla ice cream. Also, you can substitute pumpkin for the apples to make an outstanding pumpkin butter, but be prepared to up the seasoning amounts and use a spicier, smokier bourbon to compensate for the pumpkin’s lower acidity.

Now, here’s where things went off the rails, and I really can’t recommend you attempt what I did. Looking at my apple butter, I thought to myself, “Hmmm…sweet, spicy, fruity— this could be a mixer!” I lobbed about a tablespoon of the stuff into my shaker with two ounces of Buffalo Trace and then double-strained it into a chilled rocks glass, and what I wound up with was… well, honestly, not very good. The flavor balance was all wrong, with the fall seasonings disappearing into the bourbon and the tartness of the apple creating an unpleasant vacuum in the upper palate. The apple butter is outstanding in many dishes, but it doesn’t make the greatest mixer.

That being said, the seeds of a great cocktail still exist in these flavor profiles, and there are two possible routes we could still go:

(1) Perhaps there is some flavor component missing from the mix. Jessi did a little research and found a recipe for an Apple Ginger Bourbon Fizz that’s in the same vein as a Kentucky Mule (.5 tbsp apple butter, 1 oz bourbon, 4 oz ginger beer— serve on the rocks with a lime wedge). Perhaps we can play with levels and use additional seasonings and mixers to round out the flavors of this cocktail.

(2) Using more traditional ingredients we can design a cocktail that simulates the apple butter flavor without incorporating that ingredient directly. I keep my home bar stocked with brown sugar syrup, honey syrup, and apple bitters (which rely heavily on cinnamon and cloves in the flavor profile), so maybe it’s time to experiment with those ingredients and see what we come up with. I will attempt both courses of action, but admittedly, I favor this second direction since it will be more easily recreated behind a traditional bar. We’ll see how these options turn out.

To be continued.