"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." - James Beard
I love making homemade liqueurs. It's not always cheaper than buying them in the liquor store, but it is lots of fun, and you can make them to your own taste, in the amounts you need.
This homemade Limoncello is bracingly strong and tart, and not too sweet.
I used this method to make Limoncello by suspending a whole lemon wrapped in cheesecloth over vodka to vaporize the lemon oils without muddying the flavour.
I used a high-proof vodka, but you can use any clean-flavoured vodka you enjoy. I don't believe there's a lot of taste difference between top-shelf and lower-end vodkas, so use what you like.
I'm not usually terribly picky about using organic produce, but for this I highly recommend finding organic lemons. Everything in the lemon skin will go into the liqueur, including any pesticides lingering there. If you can't get organic, scrub them very well before using.
Bundle the lemon into cheesecloth and tie it with a length of twine, leaving a long string to suspend the lemon over the vodka.
I used only a cup of vodka to make about 375mL of liqueur, but you can easily double the recipe using two lemons if you have a large enough jar to suspend them without touching the vodka.
Pour the vodka into a wide-mouth jar, suspend the lemon above and wrap the string around the mouth of the jar until it holds on its own. Then put a lid on the jar.
Label it! Then put it in a cool cupboard for a month.
When a month has passed, you'll see condensation on the jar. That's the alcohol drawing out the flavour from the lemon peel.
Remove the lemon in cheesecloth and discard it. Make a simple syrup by heating water and sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the zest of one new, fresh organic lemon and let it steep for 15 minutes.
Mix the syrup and lemon peel with the vodka and let it sit for another 30 minutes.
Strain the liqueur into a bottle and discard the lemon peels. I used an old gin bottle and my awesome husband made this cute label for the bottle.
Homemade Limoncello is great to give as a gift, and there's still enough time to make a batch before Christmas!
It is great served over ice, mixed with prosecco, or in a cocktail.
Here's the recipe. Cheers!
Ingredients:
2 organic lemons
1 cup (250mL) vodka
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
Equipment:
large wide-mouth jar with lid
cheesecloth
twine
peeler or paring knife to peel lemon
Instructions:
Place vodka in a large, wide-mouth jar.
Wrap 1 lemon in cheesecloth and tie string around the top to secure it. Wrap the string around the mouth of the bottle to suspend the lemon over the vodka. Make sure the lemon doesn't touch the vodka.
Put the lid on the jar and store it in a cool, dark place for 4 weeks.
Heat the water and sugar in a saucepan. Peel the second lemon, avoiding the white pith. Once the sugar has dissolved in the water, add the lemon peel to the syrup and let cool for 15 minutes.
Mix the lemon syrup with the vodka and let sit for 30 minutes.
Strain the Limoncello and keep, refrigerated in a pretty bottle or give as a gift.
My husband loves gummy bears but doesn't always want to snack on pure sugar. So I decided to make him some fruit juice gummies in his favouite flavours!
Making gummies at home is very easy. I got these gummy bear molds that worked wonderfully, but if you don't have molds, you can set the gummies in a baking pan and cut them into cubes or shapes. I will say that the droppers really help to fill the silicone molds, and the bears come out beautifully. There are plenty of cute mold shapes available online too.
I decided to make most of the gummies with 100% juice and no added sugar, and they were lovely. But I made a small batch with a small amount of added sweetener and I have to admit they were even better. The honey brought out more flavour in the juice. I chose wild blueberry, Matt's favourite flavour, and apple cherry juice. You can use any juice you like except pineapple, which doesn't work well with gelatin.
The other ingredient is the gelatin. I used these standard envelopes of unflavoured gelatin available in any grocery store, but you can get large canisters of grass-fed gelatin online. The recipe requires a lot of gelatin, but makes a lot of gummies!
Here's what you need to make gummies at home:
1 cup fruit juice
4 tablespoons unflavoured gelatin (equal to 4 pouches in the box above)
1-2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup (optional)
Silicone gummy mold and dropper or metal or silicone baking pan
Place the juice (and honey, if using) in a small pot and slowly stir in the gelatin. Let it sit for a few minutes, then warm over medium heat, stirring until the gelatin dissolves. Don't let it boil - you just want the gelatin to melt and the mixture to be thin and shiny.
Remove from heat and use a dropper to fill the gummy molds. If you get a lot of bubbles, you can use the dropper to suck it back up and fill the dropper with non-bubbly juice to re-fill. Make sure you place the mold on a baking sheet before filling so you can easily move it to the fridge once full.
If you're using a metal pan you will need to coat it with non-stick spray or coconut oil before filling.
Place the filled molds in the refrigerator for 2 hours until completely set. The gummy bears pop easily out of the molds!
If you've set the gummies in a pan, carefully use a spatula to remove the set gummies from the pan, and use a cookie cutter or knife to cut into shapes.
The gummies will keep in the fridge for a week or two. Don't leave them at room temperature! They have no preservatives and will get moldy quickly so they must be stored in the fridge.
This is a fun project with kids and makes an easy, healthy snack!
These jello deviled eggs are super cute but weren't that easy to execute. You can buy an egg mold to make life easier, but I used these plastic eggs from the dollar store that open at the equator and it wasn't easy to get the jello out.
Every time I taste freshly-baked bread I wonder why I don't bake it more often. Then I look around at the counter, bowls and hands covered in a gloopy mess and I remember. This baguette recipe from Dan Leader makes three delicious crusty loaves. I didn't get them to rise as much as I thought they should, and one of mine was a bit misshapen, but otherwise I declare the experiment a success! I even kneaded the dough by hand when I usually go with the less messy mixer method.
The hands on work for this project is minimal, but you need almost a full day waiting for the dough to rise at each stage. It's called a 4-hour baguette, but it took more like 6 hours for me from first mix to first bite. Still, that was only about an hour of hands-on time, with delicious results.
And, you can't beat the ingredients list. Flour, water, yeast & salt. That's it. Baking bread is magic in that way. The simplest ingredients turn into something so fantastic with just mixing and time.
Aside from the basic ingredients, you need a few other items to make this work. A kitchen scale is a big help because baking works better when ingredients are weighed. You'll also need parchment paper, a baking stone or inverted baking sheet, a cast iron pan, and a pair of scissors.
Well, these were fantastic! It's a bit of a project to assemble the dumplings. It takes a little time but it's not that hard. And the effort is worth it.
This recipe made 40 dumplings, so there were plenty leftover to freeze.
One special ingredient I needed to track down was round dumpling wrappers. My local supermarket has a decent supply of Asian ingredients, but only had square wonton wrappers, so I had to go to the Chinese speciality store for these. But they only cost a buck!
Here's what you need for these fantastic dumplings:
.JPG "Jello Deviled Eggs")
