Baking With Booze: Celebrate Spring Break Like A Grown-Up

This time some years ago you were probably flying off to some semi-exotic location like Panama City Beach, Florida, or South Padre Island, Texas, with the rest of the collegiate community to experience the rite of passage known as Spring Break. At this point in your life it's probably inappropriate (or at least inconvenient) to jet away for a week and do irreparable damage to your liver, so why not bake with booze instead of drinking it?

These cookies are made with amaranth flour and rolled in whole amaranth seed for a crunchy, nutty cookie. Similar to quinoa, amaranth is a protein-packed seed indigenous to South America.

Use leftover, slightly stale brioche bread for a New Orleans-style bread pudding and soak up the rich flavors of butter, brown sugar, bourbon, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Add vodka to the Cheez-It crust and bourbon to the filling of this doubly boozy and cheesy apple pie.

Layer chocolate-liqueur-spiked chocolate mousse with cognac-spiked chocolate cake, topped off with a white chocolate frosting, for a decadent layer cake dessert.

Everything you want about a chocolate stout cake, but in a convenient single-serving mug cake form.

Use store-bought bread mix to make these super savory beer-doused muffins.

Top pound cake with macerated fresh peaches and a drunken caramel sauce for a simple warm-weather dessert. Store-bought pound cake makes this a ridiculously easy dessert to create.

A splash of vodka goes into homemade blueberry ice cream to keep it from freezing solid. Situated between two freshly baked lemon cookies, this is the ultimate summer dessert.

Bacon grease (lard) makes for a flaky bacon-flavored crust that pairs perfectly with maple bourbon bacon pecan filling. Bourbon whipped cream is the clear choice for a topper.