Holiday Eggnog

Serves about 6-8

This started out as a Cook's Illustrated recipe, but I've tweaked it a few times over the years. For some reason, each tweak adds a bit more fat, sugar and alcohol. Go figure...

Custard Base:
    6 whole eggs
    3 egg yolks
    3/4 cup demerara or turbinado sugar
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    3 cups whole milk
    1 cup half-and-half
    1 cup dark rum (bourbon is also good but packs a punch)
    1 tablespoon vanilla extract
    1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus extra for garnish

Instead of half & half, you can use 1 12-oz can of evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk) and reduce whole milk to 2 1/2 cups. This adds a nice caramelly flavor to the nog.

If you don't have the fancy sugar in your cupboard, substitute 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup light brown sugar.


Cream Mix:
    3/4 cup heavy cream
    1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
    1 tablespoon dark rum
    1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
    pinch salt
    a sprinkle of nutmeg


For the custard, Cook's wants you to whisk cold milk into the eggs in small increments and then heat over the lowest possible flame. That takes waaay more patience than I have. A faster method is to preheat the milk and then whip out your handy-dandy braun stab blender and just go to town. Also, if you use a whisk to stir the custard you can give it a bit more heat and cut the cooking time. The key is to keep it moving, sweep out every part of the pan bottom and don't heat it beyond 165 degrees, unless you happen to like sweet, wet, scrambled eggs.

1. Heat milk, half-and-half and 1/4 cup of the sugar in a heavy 4-quart saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the temperature registers 150-160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer.


2. Whisk eggs, yolks, remaining sugar, and salt together until blended. Slowly pour in in hot milk, blending continually with a hand blender until completely smooth. Return custard to pan and heat over low to medium flame (depending on how brave you are), stirring constantly, until custard registers 160-165 degrees. Pour custard through a fine mesh sieve set over a large bowl in an ice bath. Once cool, stir in rum, vanilla and grated nutmeg. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until well chilled, at least three hours and up to two days.


3. Just before serving, whip cream mix ingredients in a chilled bowl to very soft peaks. Gradually whisk in custard until well incorporated. Serve immediately, garnishing with optional grated nutmeg.

Good career advice: if you're making this for a work party, you might want to cut the rum in half. Reduce the the cream mix by 1/3 to keep the right consistency. If making it for the kiddies, cut the cream mix by 2/3 and the rum to 2 tbsp (you still need a tiny bit o' rummy goodness to make it taste right).

Enjoy!