Holiday drinks, made plant-based

Vegg nog

We are still trademarking that name. You can buy plant-based nog at almost any Calgary grocery store in December and it is genuinely good, so start there if you are short on time.

Making it is better. A blender nog built on cashew and almond milk, sweetened with maple syrup and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, comes out thicker and less cloying than the carton. If you cannot have nuts, oat milk with a tin of sweetened condensed coconut milk does the same job.

Gingerbread hot cocoa

Swap the milk for oat milk, which steams better than any other plant milk, then build the flavour with cocoa powder, vanilla, maple or agave syrup and a teaspoon or two of the spice mix below. Whisk it over medium heat rather than boiling it, because cocoa goes bitter when it catches.

Maple spiced mulled cider

The better cold-weather move than mulled wine, and the one we make once the temperature drops below minus twenty, which in Calgary is most of the winter. Apple cider goes in a pan on low with cinnamon sticks, cloves, vanilla and orange, maple syrup to taste, and twenty minutes of patience. Add spiced rum at the end if it is that kind of evening.

Everything else

Most holiday cocktails convert with three swaps. Change the sweetener if it is honey, change the dairy for a plant milk with enough body to carry it, and change egg whites for aquafaba, which is the liquid you normally pour down the drain when you open a tin of chickpeas.