If you can’t have fun with vodka, you’re just not drinking enough!

Naw…  silliness aside, I had a couple fun recipes that I wanted to try with some cheap vodka, some strawberries and some vanilla beans!  So I finally got everything together and decided to give it a whirl!

Just as a disclaimer, I’m really not much of a drinker.  I love brewing beer and making wine was fun too, and there’s just nothing better than a good cold home brew with a plate of BBQ pork or oh, even better a nice big cheese burger off the grill!  And every so often I love a nice frozen margaurita!

I still have about 10 of my beers left from LAST years brewing!!!  I guess I just need some more drinking buddies to help feed my brewing fun.

But this always interested me.  Making your own fruit cordial.  Cordials remind me of sweet little old ladies sitting on their porch in their Sunday best, with a teeny little sweet cordial drink to make the afternoon just mellow.  And of course, with little dainty tea cakes and cucumber sandwiches cut in little triangles.  A sweet little liquor that you can drizzle over a bit of vanilla ice cream for a nice grown up desert.

And while reading a book on brewing, I learned that a very simple cordial can be made with just three ingredients.  Cheap vodka, fresh fruit and some sugar.  Oh yes, and time.

My recipe was to fill a quart mason jar with half fruit.  Cut and mashed a bit.  Add one cup of sugar.  And then fill to the brim with vodka.

Pretty darn easy.  Even kids could make it!  Ahem.  Well, maybe as a gift for grandma!!!!  Yeah!!!

Actually, it was fun to shake it up and see the vodka start to turn a lovely red.  I’d like to make one with fresh peaches, too, but darn, I ran out of vodka!  Hmmmm….

Another fun thing to do is to make your own vanilla extract!  Why pay good money for an ounce of the stuff, when for about $15 dollars you can make a whole quart of the heavenly scented infusion?

I bought a package of Madagascar premium vanilla beans on eBay for $9.99, free shipping!  I believe there was 20 in the package.  Perhaps 25.

I simply cut them in half, and slit each bean down the middle to expose the seeds and inner part.  Then just toss in that quart Mason jar and fill with vodka!  And again, for some reason, the cheaper the better.

Set both concoctions in a cool, dark place, like a cupboard in your pantry.  Shake every time you think about it, or see them there.  Maybe once a day.

The cordial will be tolerable in a week or two, much nicer in a month, and simply sublime in half a year.  The vanilla extract really needs a good two months to properly infuse.  But six months will give you the most exquisite extract you’ve every had!

I did add more vodka to my vanilla a few days later…  just for reference, a small bottle of vodka is not quite a half gallon!

I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.  They look pretty darn good after about a week or so, already.  This picture below was the same day I started them!

If it works out nicely, I’d like to try and make a few more infusions…  like a peach and maybe a fresh mint from the garden!  That would be delightful!  I just think it’s neat to make these things that you have to wait for.  Like beer, or wine, or cheese.  At first, you think, oh, that’s just too long, can’t wait for something like that… but after you start a few of these things, time flies and before you know it, you are ready to sample that creation!   I have my first wheel of cheese working…  just another week before we can give it a taste!!!  Can’t wait!!!

 

 

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