Alcohol recipes: the perfect way to celebrate The Great Gatsby ...

Drink up ? The Great Gatsby. Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS. PICTURES/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

As fashion magazines fill up with 1920s-inspired spreads to celebrate Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, those of us more concerned with culinary pleasures can find other ways to remember this most whiskey-sodden of American novels.

Cookery writer and all-round bon viveur Kiki Bee certainly thinks so. Her new book, Bootleg Bakery, takes direct inspiration from Gatsby's prohibition-era America, in which chefs had to find creative ways of sneaking alcohol past the authorities. She had the idea when having an afternoon tea treat once: "I kept looking between the jug of Pimm's and the lemon cake on the table and thinking: 'I should do something with this.'"

1. The Great Gatsby
2. Production year: 2013
3. Country: Rest of the world
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 143 mins
6. Directors: Baz Luhrmann
7. Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Callan McAuliffe, Carey Mulligan, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire
8. More on this film

The result was the "Pimm's O' Cake" recipe ? actually one of the less boozy offerings in the book. Much more decadent are the "kiss and tell tarts" laced with vodka and the "flutter of green fairy cakes", which are liberally dosed with absinthe. "The chances are that if the ingredients work well in a cocktail, then they'll probably work well in a cake too," she says.

Sian Meades, founder of the acclaimed lifestyle blog Domestic Sluttery, agrees that spiking a dessert with alcohol is an effective way of dialing up the decadence. She says that alcohol-infused cakes are a favourite with her readers, from relatively demure Limoncello and White Chocolate Cake to the epic Giant Boozy Jaffa Cake. "There's something about the rich flavours involved in chocolate, cream and fruit that mean some sort of alcohol is always going to work well with them," Meades says

The right kind of alcohol can also act as a stand-in for other ingredients. Meades explains that rum is a good way to add richness to a chocolate cake when you haven't got good-quality cocoa. Alcohol can also help keep "dry" cakes nice and moist. It can also boost a dessert's sweetness. In fact, Bee recommends using far less sugar if you're planning to add lots of alcohol to a recipe.

Despite the old cliche of maiden aunts getting tipsy on trifle, boozy desserts won't actually get you drunk ? will they? It does, of course, depend on what point you add alcohol into the overall mix. If you do want a kick, "don't use all your alcohol pre-baking," advises Bee, "because it won't carry through and will just bake out. Instead, drizzle it on afterwards so it will saturate the cake".

Meades advises not sloshing so much booze into the mixture that you're left with a sticky mess. "People do tend to think: 'I want a really boozy cake,' and then add far too much alcohol. They forget that alcohol is a liquid so it's just not going to rise ? it's just going to be too runny."

As far as alcohol and food go, there's also the old adage, recounted by everybody from Kingsley Amis to Keith Floyd, that you should only ever use a bottle in the kitchen you wouldn't be afraid to use at the table. And this holds just as true for desserts as main courses ? up to a point.

"I think the better the booze, the better the result. But there's a point where you have to draw the line. With some expensive whiskies it'd just be sacrilegious," says Bee.

Have you got a penchant for properly boozy sherry-laced trifle, or a favourite alcohol-infused recipe? Tell us below.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/may/09/alcohol-recipes-great-gatsby

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