Cocktails are an essential part of Thanksgiving, whether they're helping us celebrate the day, or survive the in-laws. After lots of trial and error, we've developed one rule for guiding our boozy offerings on the big day: keep it simple. So simple that your guests can help themselves without constantly taking you away from the cooking tasks at hand.

The honey old-fashioned from Rebekah Peppler's Honey edition fits that bill. You can make the honey syrup up to 1 week ahead of time, then lay out the ingredients, buffet style, with a little instruction sheet for how to assemble the drink.

Mike's Honey-Vanilla Old Fashioned

Mike, my stepdad, has been making old-fashioneds for as long as I can remember. Throughout the years, he’s tweaked the whiskey proportions to get just the right amount of burn-to-sweet ratio. When developing the recipes for this book, I took a trip back home, slipped him a batch of honey syrup and a vanilla bean and let him go at it. He got it right on the first try, but we “retested” the cocktail all weekend long, just to be sure. -Rebekah Peppler

SERVES 1

1½ ounces bourbon whiskey

½ ounce rye whiskey

¼ ounce orange blossom honey syrup (1 cup honey dissolved in 1 cup simmering water)

¼ vanilla bean, split and scraped

4 dashes Angostura bitters

Ice

1 orange twist, for garnish

Combine the bourbon, rye, honey syrup, vanilla bean seeds and bitters in a mixing glass. Fill with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with an orange twist and serve immediately.

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