bourbon + walnut

A few years back, my grandparents took my brother and I on a day trip to Lynchburg, Tennessee. Lynchburg is the home of the Jack Daniels Distillery. This is where they manufacture Jack Daniels whiskey. It's a long, tedious, detailed process. You can take a tour of the distillery and experience every step of making the whiskey with explanations of each method. The tour was extremely educational, interesting and filled with all sorts of... aromas (if you've been on this tour, you know I'm talking about the sour mash). Fun fact: Lynchburg is a dry county, which means they don't sell alcohol within city limits. After we left, my grandma wanted to stop by somewhere and pick up the honey whiskey that was limited edition at the time of the tour. Since Lynchburg is a dry county, we drove out of our way to get a bottle of it and took it back home to Alabama.

Fast forward to this past summer. My grandparents are not drinkers. In fact, my grandma only bought the whiskey to be able to cook with it. When my brother and I visited last summer, the whiskey bought a few years before had barely been touched. I'm not even sure it was opened. My brother, being the budding chef he is, saw it and asked if he could use it in a bourbon pecan pie that he'd been itching to make.

He got in the kitchen and whipped up the pie. The house smelled heavenly. After it was done and cooled down a bit, he cut a big slab of the pie for himself and a small piece for my grandma. She took a bite and cringed slightly at the overwhelming taste of alcohol in the pie. My brother admitted that he may have accidentally added more whiskey than the recipe had called for. It was still delicious if not a bit more alcoholic than intended.

The next morning over breakfast, my grandma swore that her piece of pie sent her straight to sleep. She also admitted that she was worried that my brother may have eaten too much pie and she almost checked on him to see if he was still breathing overnight. She was a bit exaggerated in her concerns and we still tease her about it to this day.

I feel like the topic of alcohol comes up a lot in my blogs, but it's such a useful ingredient that contributes so many types of flavors, depending on the liquor used, when added to recipes. I came up with this recipe after I stopped into the Spice and Tea Exchange in downtown Greenville. They had an entire portion of the wall dedicated to flavored sugars. None of them spoke to me (and my nose) quite like the bourbon walnut turbinado sugar. I picked up the pack and the gears started turning in my head, and this is the recipe that came out of it. Enjoy!

This doughnut uses the brioche doughnut base recipe.

for the glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp bourbon*

Mix all of the ingredients together until smooth.

*reduce to cook off the alcohol

for the topping:
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1 cup crushed or halved walnuts

Top the freshly dipped doughnuts with the sugar and walnuts, garnish as little or as much as you want, it's up to you! Be careful not to let your glaze harden before you add the toppings or else they will not stick.

Here's a printable version of this recipe!

There you have it! 'Til next time,