Category Archives: general crafting

Hobo wine

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For Christmas I got a Spike Your Juice kit. It contains an airlock, a rubber stopper and 6 packets of yeast. You supply the 64 oz bottle of juice. Now that I have time enough at last, I decided I wanted some homemade hooch. The kit says that in 48 hours (!!!) I could have that sweet sweet liquor. Okay, cool! Before I started, I decided to surf around to see what the results might be. I stumbled on CNET’s DIY Weekend. The guys there had the same kit and the results were pretty good. So why not make it better? They decided to boil the juice and add honey and sugar  to up the sugar content. Then instead of letting it sit 48 hours, they let it sit for 2 weeks.

The results? “We have no idea what the proof is, but I’ve had shots of Jager with less kick.” Yessssss. I must haves it.

Sunday will be the end of week one of organic grape juice hooch. It is still merrily burbling away and probably still will be in another week. Muhahahahaha.

Ice cream results…

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Oh god.

So, I found a recipe for malt flavored ice cream. I like malts. Malt sounds delightful. They even recommend swilring in dulce de leche. AWESOME!

No.

I made the batch of malt base and did this odd sous-vide to cook the custard which worked pretty well for not having the “real” equipment (A freezer bag and a pot of hot water worked fine). I turned half the batch as is and the other half with dulce de leche. The recipe says to use sweetened condensed milk to really give it that store bought feel if you can’t get a hold of Cremodan. Great! But now I have this half can of sweetened condensed milk. WHat should I do with it? Make my own dulce de leche!

No. Do not want. Don’t ever try.

This…substance does not swirl. In fact it sets up like fucking concrete. No worries, say I. I’ll nuke it a bit then swirl it in. Nope. chunks of milky sweet boulders. Then I saw that I had some cajeta I bought at the farmer’s market. Surely this will…no. Not at all. *sigh* It’s all still tasty but just an utter pain in the hole.

Next up, avocado!

I used Alton Brown’s recipe and used whole milk from a local dairy. This was gonna be great! I mix it up and it is damned tasty. I stick it in the fridge…and forgot about it for about 5 days. No problem right.

Oh you would be wrong. So very wrong. The milk went sour or something. It…ugh. It was bad. I almost cried. So, I tried again that weekend. With not so awesome milk and a different recipe that called for coconut milk to make it really rich. Why, why did I change the recipe. This one was not as good but I turned it anyway and it’s still…not so good. Dammit. Now, maybe a scoop of this plus a scoop of candy and malt might be good.

Now, raspberry sorbet.

You know what? I’m just not even gonna go into details. If you have a known-good recipe, just follow it. Don’t try to wing it based on memory.

Time Enough At Last

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Now that my semester and my college career is finally over, I now have time to devote to some crafty experimentation.

This weekend, I believe I will make ice cream. So challenging I know. I found a recipe for malt flavored ice cream using not malt powder but real malt…stuff. You know, like Whoppers. We’ll see how it goes. I also want to try a dulce de leche with swirls of the sticky stuff through out. I don’t see that going well, but I’ll try.

Crafty Update

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  1. Meringue cookies: SUCCESS! They were pretty damn good!
  2. Jam/jelly: 4 dozen so far. Double berry sangria, pomegranate-cherry, apple pie (with real apples…looks like applesauce 🙁 ), and a pomegranate-cherry-Christmas Wine one.
  3. Bourbon caramel sauce: That shit takes too long to make. Maybe next year. When I have more time. (wheee!)
  4. 3 flavors of marshmallows: SUCCESS! The last batch of chocolate ones that I took to work were described as tasting like Count Chocula without the milk.
  5. Chocolate Cherry Bourbon bark: meh. The cherries were too wet and cause the chocolate to look like it was moldy. The second batch seized so bad I tossed it. I might try again with slightly better directions.
  6. Honey Caramels: Nope. didn’t even try.

Now here is a list of stuff I did manage to get right that I hadn’t planned to do:

  1. 3 batches of fudge. I might make more since I have more chips. It’s quick and easy and people seem to like it okay.
  2. A Longhorn patterned no sew fleece throw. I made one for my mom in Cowboys pattern a couple of years ago. I swore I would never make another. Apparently I lied. My back still aches. Those things take minimum two hours to make for an adult sized one. I think I’ll move on to making baby blankets. Or pillows.

So..two is not really a list, huh. I plan on making more jams/jellies because I ran out of time and got started way late this year. I’m going to experiment with IKEA juice drink concentrates. Ooooohhh…

It must be Christmas Time…

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Because I apparently really only update this thing at Christmas. Ugh.

So, I did indeed strain my infusions, sweetened two of them and set them all to age. They will be bottled for presents. They look quite festive. I also discovered a large Svedka bottle of raspberry-apricot infused vodka in the back of the pantry. The raspberries were infused LAST YEAR and the apricots I added in January ans strained sometime earlier this year. Oh and there was a jar of apricot infused vodka. Dunno what the hell to do with any of this. I make stuff and either don’t eat/drink it or just give it away blindly. Who knows if people even like these experiments.

Anyway, on to the other kitchen stuff. This season I have on my list to make:

  1. Meringue cookies (another experiment. Never made them before)
  2. 3 types of jam/jelly with a variety of fruit. 2 is a variety, right?
  3. Bourbon caramel sauce (again, an experiment)
  4. 3 flavors of marshmallows
  5. Chocolate Cherry Bourbon bark (experiment. recipe includes the lines “hat bourbon you drained off? Swig that shit.” Yeah.)
  6. Honey Caramels. I have not yet decided if I’m going to do this one.

So yeah. And I haven’t ordered my jars yet. I may just deal with the regular canning jars from the grocery store this year. It’s about what’s inside, not the outside. Yeah. That’s it.

Infusions

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I have a lot of herbs. I planted 3 types of basil (I only count one maybe two that have survived. tip: don’t use popsicle sticks as markers) and I don’t use a lot of basil. In fact, I don’t know of anyone outside of the country of Italy that would use this much basil. So I decided I had to do something. I made Lime-cello last Christmas (went over quite well) and I heard I could do the same with herbs. Herbs have a far shorter infusion time (36 hours instead of 6 month for fresh fruit). So. Here I am. Veritable small hills of basil, mint, and lemon verbena (the hell do you do with verbena??) and a Spec’s nearby. 100 proof vodka and Everclear in hand, I made up some infusions. So far:

  • 1 12oz jar of Everclear + Lemon Verbena (it turned green in 4 hours)
  • 1 12 oz jar of Basil + Everclear (again, green in 4 hours)
  • 1 12 oz of Basil + vodka (not as vibrant green in a day)

This was done Sunday. I still have not strained out the herbs. why? LAZY. I will do it tonight and probably won’t sweeten it until it’s aged up a bit. I dunno. Sugar is cheap.

Jams!

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Cherries were on sale a couple of weeks ago. I made 4 12oz and 5 1oz jars of nice cherry jam! No pictures. Of course. Because this is the poor neglected bastard blog.

That week I also made 3 quart jars of pickles from cucumbers I got at the farmers’ market. Two jars were kosher dills from a recipe I found online (using fresh dill and a bit of basil from my garden) and one was kosher dill with a bit of curry powder. We’ll see how those turn out

Holiday Recap

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I know I know I know. I was bad. I didn’t update my holiday crafty crap like I said I would. So here’s a recap with pictures:

  1. Lime-cello
  2. Cherry Bourbon
  3. Cucumber Gin
  4. 3 batches of honey caramels
  5. 6 dozen jellies/jams (yes, dozen)
  6. 3 batches of marshmallows
  7. 2 batches of fudge
  8. 3 jars of pickles
  9. 1 jar of pickled asparagus
  10. 2 jars of pickled green beans
  11. 2 batches of fruit cakes (6 mini loaves each)

More Progress

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11-6 weekend:

  • 2 batches of caramels
  • fruitcake recipe #2  (less dried fruits, more candied traditional fruits)
  • 2 batches of prickled green beans
  • 1 batch of pickled asparagus
  • lime vodka infusion sweetened to make it limcello.

11-13 weekend goals:

  • *drumroll please*  JELLY!

Between this, homework for two classes, and a project; it’s gonna be a long weekend.

Oh Lord

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53 pounds of canning jars and other assorted packaging is motoring (i’ll be damned if I splurge for air shipping for some jars!) its way here. 53 pounds. 2 boxes.

Also, just ordered 1.5 pounds of vanilla beans. WHO NEEDS THAT MANY VANILLA BEANS?? Not all for me though.