Vegan Eggnog Recipe

If you could pick one taste to represent the flavor of the winter holiday season, you'd be right on the mark if you picked eggnog. Sure, there are Christmas cookies, the latkes and briskets of Hannukah, the champagne toasts on New Years' Eve, but there's really nothing quite like enjoying a glass of eggnog as the holidays roll around.

Of course, that's rather a hard sell for people who follow a vegan diet, what with the whole egg part of the nog. Or at least it was before this method for making vegan eggnog came along care of chef and recipe developer Susan Olayinka of The Flexible Fridge.

And don't you non-vegan, traditional nog fans fret — this drink isn't going to leave you missing your favorite winter treat. "It's ... so creamy just like the regular one," Olayinka says, adding: "This drink always reminds me of Christmas, my favorite time of the year." It will do the same for you and yours, regardless of the type of omnivorous or vegan diet they practice. Let's get started!

A few of the ingredients needed to make this vegan eggnog may send you to the store, but you should be able to find them at most decent-sized grocery stores. And once you try this stuff, you'll probably end up keeping the needed ingredients on hand — at least until the holidays are over. All told, you'll need oat milk, full-fat coconut milk, cashew butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and granulated white sugar.

Place the oat milk, full-fat coconut milk, cashew butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and granulated white sugar into blender — the order does not much matter, as long as you make sure the cashew butter settles down to the bottom instead of getting stuck to the sides of the blender. (And if you're going to make this an adult holiday beverage, now is the time to add a couple of shots of dark rum, brandy, or bourbon.)

Now blend the ingredients on high for 30 seconds to fully combine them into a vegan eggnog.

Now pour out servings of the eggnog using mason jars or your favorite glassware, then sprinkle powdered cinnamon on top and place optional cinnamon sticks in the drinks. You can also sprinkle on cocoa powder, a bit of ginger and nutmeg, or whatever sounds great to you. (And that will look great in pictures — Olayinka says: "I loved making and shooting this!")

And if you made more than needed, no problem: It will keep in the fridge for up to two days in an airtight container.

Okay, so what's with the name "eggnog," you ask? Well, the egg part is easy enough, as traditional eggnog includes — you guessed it — eggs. The whites, anyway. As for the nog part, that's pretty much unknown, we're sorry to report. According to TIME, the "nog" part of the word may refer to a shortening of the word "noggin," which in that context referred not to a person's head but rather to a wooden cup.

We don't know exactly why it's called eggnog, but we do know that variations on this drink have been popular for hundreds of years. In fact, none other than George Washington himself created a recipe for one sublime-sounding nog. In said recipe, he used four kinds of booze, a whole lot of cream, some milk, some eggs, and a whole lot of sugar.