Splash of good cheer

Celebrate this year’s holidays by boozing up your desserts.

Let the kiddos have their milk and cookies; this holiday season, we’re indulging in desserts meant for the 21+ crowd.

From rum balls to fruitcakes, spirits-infused sweets are a familiar sight at this time of year.

“It’s fun, but it’s also comforting. And there’s no better time than the holidays,” says pastry chef Janina O’Leary, who oversees the desserts for Bacchus Management Group, which operates a number of Bay Area restaurants, including the Saratoga in the Tenderloin.

Adding a bit of booze to holiday baking is a festive way to splurge and make dessert time feel a little more grown-up and special, but at the Saratoga, you’ll find an assortment year-round, including bourbon-spiked cherry hand pies, Scotch pudding with Johnny Walker Black Label caramel, and even mimosa doughnuts made with blood orange and Champagne.

“We’re always trying something new; pushing the limits on how much booze we can add before it’s too much,” says O’Leary.

In addition to O’Leary, for this year’s holiday baking special, we reached out to several other San Francisco chefs — the Morris’ Gavin Schmidt; Sixth Course’s Bridget Labus and Gianina Serrano; and 20th Century Cafe’s Michelle Polzine — to share their own high-proof dessert recipes to help make this season just a bit more merry and bright, because let’s face it, 2017 has been a doozy of a year. And we could all use a drink.