Elf Themed Drinks: A Christmas Party Menu Built on Buddy's Four Food Groups

In our house the 2003 movie Elf goes on at least twice every December, and the same moment gets the biggest laugh each time. Buddy sits down to breakfast and drowns a plate of spaghetti in maple syrup. Somewhere in the second viewing a few years ago, we decided that plate was the party.

The elves, as Buddy explains, live on candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup. So does our drinks table. This is a fan party with cards we drew ourselves, nothing official and nothing to do with the studio. Every drink below is a real recipe from our database, and the amounts are what we pour at home. If a guest turns up with a bottle we didn’t plan for, we look it up in Cocktail Builder and find it a seat.

Syrup first

Syrup is the silliest of the four food groups and the most useful one behind a bar. Maple has a toasted, woody sweetness that white sugar never manages, and it gets along beautifully with whiskey.

Our first card is the Maple Old Fashioned: bourbon, maple syrup and bitters. We stir two ounces of bourbon with a scant quarter ounce of dark maple and two dashes of Angostura, then pour it over one big cube. The darker grades taste more like maple and less like plain sweetness, so they stand up to the oak.

Guests who want something brighter get the Maple Leaf. It shakes bourbon with lemon juice and maple, and drinks like a whiskey sour that spent the weekend in a cabin. We go two ounces of bourbon, three-quarters of an ounce of lemon and half an ounce of syrup. For the rum people there’s Breakfast Rum, light rum with lemon and maple, which is more or less a daiquiri with a stack of pancakes on its mind.

The Maple Syrup Shot is our favorite joke on the table, because it has no maple syrup in it. Butterscotch schnapps and spiced rum, half and half. Somehow the pair tastes like a diner breakfast anyway.

Candy canes

Peppermint is where the room starts to look like the North Pole. It’s also where the glasses get pink.

We think the Candy Cane is the prettiest glass we serve. Peppermint schnapps, crème de cacao and half-and-half go in over ice with a little grenadine, and a short top of 7-Up gives it a soft fizz. It comes out the pale pink of a melted candy cane. A small cane hooked over each rim does half our decorating for us.

Later in the evening, the Candy Cane Shot brings peppermint schnapps, Rumple Minze, cream and grenadine together. Pour the grenadine first and the rest slowly on top, and a red stripe settles at the bottom of the glass. The Chocolate Covered Candy Cane is only Godiva chocolate liqueur and Rumple Minze in equal parts. It tastes like the foil-wrapped mint that comes with the check at a nice restaurant.

Around the time the snowball fight comes on, somebody wants a warm mug. A slow cooker of cocoa sits on the counter all night with a bottle of peppermint schnapps beside it, which turns any cup into Peppermint Hot Chocolate. One ounce per mug is plenty. If the mint table keeps growing, our peppermint schnapps drinks guide and the hot chocolate cocktails roundup have more.

Candy corn, in December

Candy corn at a Christmas party feels slightly wrong, which makes it perfect for Buddy. The Candy Corn cocktail is cream, Licor 43 and orange curaçao. The Licor 43 brings vanilla, the curaçao brings orange, and the cream rounds them off into something that honestly does taste like the candy. We shake it hard and serve it small.

The Candy Corn Martini goes richer: vanilla vodka, butterscotch schnapps, crème de cacao and orange juice, with dark cocoa powder dusted over the top. We pour it into little glasses and nobody complains.

Just plain candy

The fourth group is the widest, so here we chase color. Cotton Candy #4 is peach schnapps, Malibu and pink lemonade, a pink glass that smells like a county fair. Santa’s Little Helper mixes apple schnapps, butterscotch schnapps, cinnamon schnapps and apple juice into the nearest thing we know to a caramel apple you can drink. Buddy counts as one of Santa’s helpers, so that card goes at the head of the table.

The elves get a drink with their name on it. Elf Tea is iced tea with peppermint liqueur, lemon juice and a pinch of sugar, cool and much lighter than anything else we pour. Elf Tea #2 trades the lemon for Baileys and peppermint schnapps and turns creamy. Iced tea in December sounds odd. Then the living room fills up, the oven’s been on for hours, and by nine o’clock everyone wants it.

The North Pole table

One small table stands apart from the rest. White cloth, paper snowflakes, a bowl of mini marshmallows and the maple syrup bottle in the middle like a trophy.

The North Pole Cocktail lives here. Gin, maraschino liqueur and lemon juice get shaken with egg (we use just the white) and finished with a cap of whipped cream. Picture a gin sour after a snowfall. Around it we set out the toppings for the spaghetti-breakfast crowd: rainbow sprinkles, crushed candy canes, chocolate syrup, and a saucer of maple sugar for wetting and rimming glasses. Guests decorate their own drinks. It keeps their hands busy and the room loud in the best way.

A glass for the kids

Children love this movie more than anyone, so they deserve better than juice. The Chocolate Peppermint Frappe has no alcohol in it at all: frozen chocolate yogurt, chocolate syrup, cold milk and round peppermint candies, blended until thick. We make one big pitcher, pour short glasses, and send the kids to the North Pole table to bury theirs in whipped cream and sprinkles.

For the ones who want fizz, we stir a teaspoon of maple syrup into cold sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon. It comes out the same amber as the grown-ups’ maple sours. To an eight-year-old, matching the adults counts for a lot more than flavor. Drivers get the same glass and seem just as pleased.

Elf themed drink names for the cards

Each drink gets a folded card with the real recipe name in small type and a party name in big letters. These are ours:

Within twenty minutes or so, people order by the party names. Nobody asks for a Maple Old Fashioned after that; they ask for the Spaghetti Breakfast. We ran the same game for our Grinch drinks menu last year and the kids still call the green fizz by its card name.

By midnight the maple bottle on the North Pole table is always empty. We have never once figured out how much of it went into drinks and how much went onto marshmallows.

Last modified on November 8, 2026