♪ When the moon hits your eye ♪
♪ Like a big pizza pie ♪
♪ Drink a negroni ♪
Welcome back to Smart Cookie.
My name's Elise Mayfield
and today I'm gonna be turning one of my favorite cocktails
into a cookie bar.
It's gonna be like eating a snack
and having a drink at the exact same time.
Whoa!
We're hopping over here to our food processor.
This one's really fancy and I like it.
So this is about four cups of pretzel sticks.
And I feel like the salt in this is really good.
It helps to counteract all of the sugar
that's gonna be in our filling.
(food processor grinding) Oh boy!
Oh!
(food processor grinding) We're doing fine,
can you hear me over the noise?
Jody, stop running the vacuum cleaner,
I'm trying to watch my show.
So about four cups of pretzel sticks
is gonna equal about two cups of ground
pretzel pieces.
And then we're gonna go right in this mixing bowl.
These kind of larger pieces are fine.
We just don't want anything that's recognizably a pretzel.
I'm gonna add some dark brown sugar.
Now if you only have light brown sugar
and you don't wanna go to the store,
that's fine, that's cool.
Brown sugar is granulated sugar mixed with molasses.
And if you happen to have granulated sugar
and molasses, you can make your own brown sugar.
Dry milk powder is gonna help absorb
some of the butter we're putting in next,
and it's gonna help with texture.
And then we're gonna add,
this is a stick and a half of melted butter.
Don't be shy.
It's salted butter too.
Again, we want this to be a little salty.
Salty pretzel crust.
So all you're doing is mixing this all together.
And then,
look at that flying in right there, perfect.
This has already been lined
with some parchment paper.
And I like to do this
so that there's some overhang
so that when we get ready
to pull these out of the pan,
you have something to hold onto.
But I'm gonna go ahead and give this a spray
on the outside.
My best friend Pam.
Never lets me down.
Always there when you need her.
Leaves a fog.
So now all we're gonna do is dump our crust makings
into our pan.
So now that I have this pretzel mixture
pressed into the bottom of our pan,
I'm gonna go put this in the oven
that's been pre-heated at 325
and we're gonna bake it for about 12, 15 minutes
until it's golden brown
and smelling fragrant.
Fantastic.
We're really cooking now.
Don't forget to set a timer.
Well while our crust is baking,
I'm gonna show you how to make a Negroni.
A Negroni is one of my favorite cocktails.
It's really simple to remember
because it's a one to one to one ratio.
This isn't one of those where you're like,
I can't even tell I'm drinking alcohol.
You can tell that you're drinking alcohol.
The ingredients are gin, Campari, and red vermouth.
That's it.
(cork popping)
Ah, that was a nice sound, wasn't it?
So I'm gonna do about an ounce
of each one of these.
We'll make two of them.
And if somebody wants to try one, they can.
Isn't that a pretty color?
Campari's such a beautiful color.
And there's some red vermouth.
Perfect.
This is great, playing bar tender.
What can I get ya?
We're gonna get our rocks, go ahead and go in there.
And try to get that swirling around.
I'm doing it, I think.
Perfect.
Will this fit?
Yeah.
So you pour your negroni.
Beautiful.
And then the final thing is an orange garnish.
And I'm just gonna kinda twist
and rub along the side of my glass,
and then leave him there.
And that is a Negroni.
Smart Cookie fact of the day.
The Negroni comes from an Italian count.
He had spent most of his 20's living in the wild wild west
as a cowboy, and he didn't tell anybody
that he was a count and his name was Count Camillo Negroni.
In his 50's when he was back in Italy,
he had a bar where he was a regular.
He went into the bar that day.
I don't know, maybe he'd had a bad day or something
but he was like, I want something a little bit stronger
than what I've been getting.
And he'd been getting a drink called an americano.
So he asked his bar tender to change out the soda water
for gin, and to switch out the lemon peel for the orange.
The people in the bar started asking for whatever
the count was drinking,
and then it kind of circulated around Florence, Italy
where he was, and that's how we got the Negroni.
Now that I've got my drink made,
I think it's time that we get back to baking.
So we're gonna clear all of this
and we'll be right back.
It's ready.
I wish you guys could smell the kitchen right now
'cause it smells great.
This has turned into a very nice golden brown crust.
Once you take your crust out
you wanna bump the temp up from 325 to 350.
Perfect.
Now that we know what a Negroni is,
we're gonna use some of those elements
and make a really sweet and interesting filling.
First thing's first, we've got some sugar.
We've got six eggs, so this is a lot of eggs going in here.
I am going to whisk together some sugar and six eggs
so that we can get some air into that mixture,
and then we'll add our other things.
So, we got our sugar and our eggs all combined.
Next thing's next, we're gonna add some flour
for some structure.
Go ahead and get that going.
Now we gotta add flavor.
We got some fresh squeezed OJ.
That's gonna help bring in our flavors
that we had from the garnish, right.
So we're gonna bring in some fresh squeezed OJ.
We'll go ahead and whisk this.
Grapefruit.
Now I know grapefruit wasn't in our original cocktail,
we just had orange, but
Campari has some similar flavors to grapefruit.
So that's kinda where you're getting that floral fruitiness.
We're gonna zest a whole grapefruit.
This is gonna take me a hot second.
Just let me keep doing this.
Alright, great.
We're gonna stir that in.
Now we're gonna cut this grapefruit in half.
Gorgeous.
It is, look at how pretty that is.
Don't laugh at me, it's pretty.
Since I don't wanna waste this grapefruit
'cause we just zested it,
we're gonna take the juice from half of this grapefruit.
We're gonna pour that in as well.
Now it's time to make our Negroni section of this.
Two tablespoons of gin.
(cork popping)
So good.
Two tablespoons of vermouth.
Whoa boy, it's fine.
And then we're gonna do a whole quarter cup of Campari.
Kinda the color of an orange sherbet.
So I'm just gonna pour this custard
over the top of our pretzel crust.
I know it's really liquidy right now
but there's so much egg in here,
I promise you it will set up.
This is gonna bake for about a half hour,
but we're probably gonna cover it halfway through
'cause it might get a little too roasty toasty on top.
Perfect.
It's five o'clock somewhere.
Hey guys.
Alright, so it's the end of our half hour.
Our bars are ready.
Halfway through this I covered it with foil
just to keep it from browning too much.
Those are what our bars look like.
Woo!
Nice and kinda golden brown on top.
We're gonna let these cool for a half hour
at room temp and then they go in the fridge for an hour.
But in the meantime I'm gonna have something to drink.
Okay.
Now that I've had a couple of Negroni's
and these have chilled for at least an hour, or overnight.
Whatever you want.
Look, they look the same as they did
when they came out of the oven.
Isn't that fantastic?
Boom, great.
Just gonna loosen this up a little bit.
I did it.
Go ahead and get rid of these little extra overhangs.
Now we're gonna add the finishing touch.
And that involves a food processor again.
And we've also got some freeze dried strawberries.
They're very good.
About a cup of those.
Wew!
(laughs) This so fun.
Oh God (laughs).
Take a sip, huh?
Great.
I've got a little tiny fine mesh strainer,
and then we're just gonna dust the top.
Isn't that nice?
Isn't that pretty?
If you were fancy and you wanted to do a design,
you know, good on you,
but I just did the whole thing
'cause I've been drinking.
Usually what I do when I'm getting ready to cut these,
I usually go right in the middle on the long side,
and then I'm gonna make three rows on either side.
And then I'll do four rows going short ways.
I feel like there should be a movie
about Count Camilla Negroni.
He sounds fascinating
and I would like to know more about an Italian cowboy,
is what I'm trying to say.
That's sounds interesting to me.
Got pretzel, you got ooey gooey custard,
you got strawberry on top.
And then there's this little kind of bitterness
that you get from the Campari and from the grapefruit.
It looks pretty good, pretty good indeed.
And that is my recipe for a Negroni bar.
Don't forget to like, share, subscribe,
comment, all those things.
Let me know if you like Negroni's,
how you like the bars,
how you doin' with your life?
I'm interested.
Please let me know.
In the meantime I'm about to get back on that Negroni pony.
Oh yeah.
♪ That's really good, it's really good ♪
♪ Negroni pony ♪