Pumpkin Butter Is The Easy Way To Bring The Taste Of Fall To Your Cocktails

Pumpkin-flavored food products grow in popularity each year on menus and supermarket shelves. Though most pumpkin-inspired items are coffees or sweet desserts, more sophisticated palettes can ring in the fall spirit by giving cocktails the pumpkin treatment. And to do so, you don't need to visit your nearest craft cocktail bar for a specialty pumpkin-spiked cocktail — pumpkin butter is the only tool you need. Pumpkin butter is a pumpkin spice spread, and there are two main classes of cocktails that welcome pumpkin spice: whiskey-based and coffee liqueur-based cocktails.

Pumpkin and whiskey is undoubtedly a match made in Halloween heaven, hence why Julia Child poured some bourbon into her creamy take on pumpkin pie. Three classic cocktails that feature bourbon are the Manhattan, boulevardier, and old fashioned — and each can turn into a fall favorite with a tablespoon of pumpkin butter.

When preparing a pumpkin butter Manhattan, before adding any ice, muddle the pumpkin butter into the bitters, making sure they are fully emulsified. For a classic boulevardier cocktail, mix the pumpkin butter into whichever ingredient you add first — Campari, sweet vermouth, or bourbon. To make a pumpkin butter old fashioned, muddle the pumpkin butter along with the sugar and bitters (or omit the sugar entirely if you'd prefer a less-sweet cocktail, as pumpkin butter adds a sweetness). Once the butter is incorporated into each of these, continue as you would normally to craft the traditional cocktail.

There are a host of cocktails that include coffee liqueur like Kahlua, and each of these can use pumpkin butter used to bring in splendid autumnal flavors. Turn an espresso martini — the trendy shining star of coffee liqueur cocktails — into an iced pumpkin spiked latte by mixing pumpkin butter into a freshly brewed shot of espresso. Shake the pumpkin-y espresso with the rest of the ingredients. A typical espresso martini calls for plain vodka, but add in butterscotch vodka for extra sweetness. To double down on the pumpkin flavor, shake in Baileys Pumpkin Spice to make the cocktail more fall-forward and creamy.

Bushwackers and mudslides — which are offsprings of the white Russian — are more chilled cocktails that include coffee liqueur. It may be difficult to mix the butter in when the cocktail is already cold, so before incorporating the ice into these cocktails, mix in pumpkin butter to work in its flavors and emulsify the textures.