Here's a Gestalt for you.

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Let's say you have a dark chocolate sea salt caramel cookie.  What could be better than that?

Here's where the Lichtenbergianism Precept of GESTALT comes in.  We ask ourselves, what's missing from the picture?  The answer is, clearly, a holiday cocktail.

Moreover, GESTALT allows us to take the chocolatey goodness and imagine what kind of cocktail would fill that gap.  We don't want an excessively citrus-y cocktail, nor would a bitters-heavy drink like a Manhattan work. 

Sweet, yes.  Fruity, probably.  Orange — Grand Marnier, Cointreau, orange curaçao — maybe. Raspberry/Chambord a definite possibility.

Having earlier espied the little-used bottle of Pama, a pomegranate liqueur, I decided to start with that.  If it didn't work, then that's what SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION is for, although when it comes to cocktail creation SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION can quickly become problematic. (This time I lucked out.) 

I'd made a Sidecar earlier, so my mind was already prepped for the sugar rim on the glass (and all the materials were already out). I also decided that a chocolate undertone might be a nice touch, so I pulled out the creme de cocoa as well.

Pro tip: it's always safe to start with at 3:2:1 ratio of your ingredients, i.e., 1.5 oz, 1 oz, and .5 oz of whatever.  I debated which liqueur should come out on top, the pomegranate or the cocoa, and I finally decided to go with the cocoa first and see what happened.

Here's where I ended up:

Unnamed Holiday Cocktail

  • 1.5 oz vodka
  • 1 oz creme de cocoa
  • .75 oz pomegranate liqueur
  • sugar

Rim your cocktail glass with sugar.  (I used a lemon zest-infused sugar.) Stir ingredients over ice, strain into glass. 

And that's it.  Boozy, sweet, and a perfect complement to the dark chocolate sea salt caramel cookie.  I think I will add a lemon peel garnish next time to see if it makes it better.

GESTALT.  It's not just for poets and painters.  Now all I have to do is name it.