Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Why's It Always the Rum!?

So I've got my spiced rum spicing away. I looked on the Internet and came up with this recipe using a few as inspiration. Most recipes suggest using a gold rum. At the liquor store they suggested Pusser's Rum as a nice rum
for drinking. (At least the British navy found it good enough to give every sailor a pint-a-day ration of it for 300 years.) Well, I'll just say we weren't too impressed. So I decided to try making it into spiced rum.

Many of my spices I received from friends in the Caribbean. The cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves to be specific. Did you know that mace is the covering of the nutmeg shell? I used it in place of the ground nutmeg this time.

Spiced Rum

750 ml bottle gold rum
2 vanilla beans, split
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
6 whole allspice
6 black peppercorns
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
3 slices orange peel (3 inches long, no pith-the white)
Peeled ginger about a 1" cube-may have to cut to fit into bottle

Pour about 1/4-1/2 cup of the rum out to make room for other ingredients. Add everything to the bottle and replace the rum you poured out. (Use any left for rum and Coke.) Replace lid and gently shake. After a week, taste test. Let the rum steep until. It is to your liking. 2 or more months is fine. When ready, strain through a cheese cloth lined funnel and put back into the bottle.

Use any spices you like in any quantities. Also any citrus you may prefer.

I included a picture if my latest batch of vanilla extract. This is after just one day.




 

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A Little Vanilla Crazy

Last week I bought some vanilla beans in bulk. This week I have gone a little nuts with them.

First I made vanilla sugar. Never made this before, but sounds good to me.

Next came more extract. Not that I have finished what I had previously made, but this batch is to share. Maybe.

I just finished making vanilla salt. It may sound a little weird, but I think it would be really good on salted caramel.

Here are the recipes:

Extract

750 ml bottle vodka
20 vanilla beans

Split vanilla beans almost in half. Add to vodka bottle. You will need to remove some of the vodka beforehand so it doesn't overflow. 1/4-1/2 cup should do. Add it back and use the extra to make a cocktail :).
Shake occasionally. Place in cool dark spot to steep. Wait 2-6 months.

Sugar

2 cups sugar
2 vanilla beans

Place sugar into food processor. Half and scrape vanilla bean pods and add seeds to sugar. Pulse just until evenly incorporated. Place scraped pods into a clean quart jar and cover with sugar. Seal tightly and let it sit for at least two weeks. It may slightly harden. Just shake jar to loosen.
Use like regular sugar.

Salt

3 vanilla beans
1 cup Maldon salt-or any flaky sea salt (Williams-Sonoma or Amazon.com)

Split and scrape beans. Work the seeds into the salt by hand. Divide the salt between two half-pint jars and add pods in. Seal with a tight lid. It is ready to use. Think salted caramel mocha.