Take your afternoon cocktail and nosh to the next level with these combos from some of the country’s professional pastry chefs and sommeliers. Effervescent cocktails, bright aperitifs, spiced punches, and bourbon—neat—all receive baked companions in the form of crumbly sablés, turtle brownies, savory tarts, and more.
We love the ritual of the apéritif: a small pre-meal drink with an appetite-inducing bite. With layers of earthy mushrooms atop puff pastry, this tart is the ultimate cocktail snack. This pairing is from the dream team at Washington, DC’s Le Diplomate. Serve the tart with a French Royale for a pairing that will transport you to Paris.
2. Parmesan Sablés and Late Matinee
For Atlanta food lovers, Sarah O’Brien and Paul Calvert are the power couple to know. Sarah is the mastermind behind The Little Tart Bakeshop, a pastry lover’s dreamland for pitch-perfect kouign amanns, fruit tarts that just ooze the goodness of the season, and cookies galore. Paul has been a driving force behind Atlanta’s rejuvenated—and constantly growing—cocktail culture. Recently, he teamed up with fellow Atlanta barman Greg Best to open the sultry Ticonderoga Club in the new Krog Street Market. We asked the couple to come up with the cocktail hour bite and sip they’re excited to dive into this summer. Their savory sablés and refreshing gin sipper take summer happy hour to the next level.
This pairing is one of the most popular on the menu at Butter & Scotch. It’s no surprise, as it marries the best parts of being a kid and an adult. You get to dunk Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies into a glass of milk, just like you did in your youth, but the milk is actually a cocktail, and it all ends with a most excellent combination booze-and-sugar buzz. What’s more, we swear these are the best chocolate chip cookies you’ll ever have, and that cocktail is the platonic ideal of a White Russian. For the best Coffee Liqueurs, check out their Coffee Liqueur Guide. Bonus: Nobody will tell you that you can’t have seconds (and trust us, you’ll want seconds). Sometimes adulthood is a pretty sweet deal! You can also find these recipes in their cookbook Butter & Scotch: Recipes from Brooklyn’s Favorite Bar and Bakery (Abrams Books, 2016).
