Stay away from the Unhealthiest Holiday Cocktails

We already know that although it's creamy and delicious, eggnog might be one of the worst Holiday cocktails out there. However, there are a few others that you might want to avoid just to get a jump start on those health- and weight-related New Year's Resolutions:

• White Russian, made of coffee liqueur, vodka, and cream, it has 863 calories!
  
• Mudslide, which is basically a White Russian with the addition of Bailey's Irish Cream and chocolate syrup. No wonder it's 851 calories.
• Hot Buttered Rum Latte exceeds the recommended daily intake of sugar by 36 grams.
• Chocolate Martini is probably the least evil on the list because "chocolate is healthy." It's also 438 calories.
• Admittedly, we had never heard of the Blushin' Russian, and wonder why not because it has delicious Amaretto in it! Oh yeah, maybe because we'd rather take 404 calories as a Big Mac.
• Mulled Wine is bad?!?! We were crushed, but if you make it yourself and cut back on the sugar, you'll do better than the usual 356 calories and 40 grams of carbs.
• Eggnog, surprisingly, is lower than the previous half dozen drinks with only 343 calories, but we think it's evil comes from the fact that you drink at least one every night, everywhere you go, from Thanksgiving to New Year's.
• Brandy Alexander has 297 calories. Oh well. There goes another luscious creamy drink.
  
• At 210 calories, Irish Coffee is the slimmest of the cocktails, but let's not get crazy. It's still 210 calories that you could down in 20 seconds (you'll also burn your mouth, but that's not the point, now is it?)

New Year's Eve brownies

Up until yesterday afternoon, my boyfriend and I didn't have much of a New Year's Eve plan. There were options, a couple of different friends were having parties, one of my favorite bars in the whole world was having a no coverage charge evening and some friends had invited us over for pizza (sadly, I didn't actually get the text message with that invite until after we ordered take out sushi), but no hard and fast plan.

While we were having lunch at Marathon Grill at around 3 pm, we stumbled upon what became an integral part of the plan: brownie sundaes. With that idea in place, we ran to the store for ingredients. However, when we got back to my place and I started looking at recipes, I discovered that I had forgotten to by any unsweetened chocolate and I was fresh out (I've been away for two weeks and my memory of my supply inventory has gotten foggy). However, I had a bunch of bittersweet chocolate, some semi-sweet chips and unsweetened cocoa powder and decided to improvise based on a recipe for Triple-Chocolate Fudge Brownies from The Gourmet Cookbook (the big yellow one).

The batter was amazing tasting and so I had high hopes for the brownies. And they were good, but not as amazing as I wanted them to be. However, with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream, they were definitely doable. However, they worked some alchemy last night and when I woke up this morning, they had become the brownies I had hoped for--dense, fudgy and transcendentally chocolate-y. They are worth making, especially if you are able to let them rest for 12-24 hours before digging in.