FrogPrincesse

I love it when aquavit goes tiki, and adds a strong note of spice a bit like allspice liqueur does. It's the case in Daniel Warrilow's Lost Cause, and also in this drink that I tried last night. I also love it when completely improbable combinations give rise to something nice and different! Here the drink plays on the common aromas of banana and caraway. The Danish Fly (Nick Detrich) with Krogstad aquavit, Giffard banane du Bresil, lemon juice, grenadine (amount reduced to 1 barspoon because grenadine terrifies me).

Thank you! You do have to try this recipe! I've been making it for years now because I love it so much. He doesn't post on the website anymore but wrote a couple of books!

Because my family has a few chocolate addicts, I also made a chocolate dessert for Christmas - individual soft chocolate cakes. They can be made in advance, and reheated in the microwave for 30 seconds for a molten center, and served with whipped cream. Always a hit... The original recipe calls for baking them in ramekins. I find it easier to use a muffin pan so I don't have to worry about them potentially sticking.

For Christmas dinner, I was asked to bring a dessert with no further direction. So I decided to make one of my favorite pies which is a ginger pie with a touch of rum. I love the little crispy crust that forms on top, and the leftovers are always great the next morning.

Great looking galette, @Franci! Lots of baking in this holiday season. Last week my daughter was in the mood for apple pie. Luckily I had a bunch of apples in the fridge (Granny Smith and a pink variety, probably Pink Lady). Still I was a bit short of the 3.5 lbs I needed for the recipe, so I used an Asian pear for the remainder. I went with Jeffrey Steingarten's recipe for the filling (no cinnamon, just a bit of vanilla extract for flavoring), and David Lebovitz for the pie dough. It was great but I need to invest in a proper pie pan - the pan I used has straight edges and makes it difficult to extract a perfect slice. I had it with crème fraiche as we often do with apple tarts in France.

The recipe says to taste it regularly to decide when to remove the peel, so I did this morning. The yuzu flavor is already well pronounced but I am going to leave it for another day or two (it's been 5 days). I didn't put any sugar in yet. This is fun! Another project might be to try to source the plums for umeshu!

Beets greens have the same type of flavor as sorrel with their high oxalic acid content, although a bit more earthy. Borscht being beet-based, it would make sense to use that. So look for beets with the greens still on!

I will let you know in a year or so if it is as good as it looks!

Inspired by Louis Anderman (owner of Miracle Mile bitters)... and because I had found yuzus to make marmalade, I decided to try my hand at yuzushu, the Japanese yuzu liqueur. So a few days ago I separated the segments from the skin, cleaned everything to remove as much pith as I could, and started macerating everything in vodka (gin sounded lovely but, surprisingly, I didn't have enough on hand). I found this recipe that I am following loosely. Yuzus resemble mandarins except for their color which is yellow, and they are quite easy to peel. Their flesh is not very juicy and is typically very full of seeds. Their skin is intensely aromatic.

Hi @quiet1, thanks for the update, and sorry to hear about your health issues. The recipient of the gifts is one lucky person, and I am sure he will enjoy them! I never heard about The Little Black Bar Book, can you tell us more? Or were you referring to Morgenthaler's Bar Book maybe? Simple syrup isn't hard to make at all, even when you are under the weather. I just made a batch which took less than a minute. I scooped half a cup of sugar into a container (using a small funnel), and added half a cup of filtered water (you can do this by weight if you prefer). I closed the container and shook for a few seconds. I let it rest while I was preparing my cocktail, and shook it again a couple of times. Done, and no need to heat the syrup. There is no reason to ever buy simple syrup at the store! Lastly, if you liked the spoon from Standard Spoon, the same people came up with a very cool looking mixing glass and muddler that are available for pre-order here. I am tempted!

California cherries in December?! That sounds a bit... puzzling.

You know, I went back and forth on that. I didn't have much space on the table so I ended up only showing one of each. But maybe I could have displayed 2 or 3 or each kind? That might have required some type of vertical storage/shelves though, as the table was already a bit crowded...

You are very welcome, Nancy! Here are more pictures of the booth that I took before the beginning of the market. I wasn't too worried about someone casually walking away with my copper pot, as it's rather heavy and bulky (and I didn't leave my booth). We had one little girl try to run away with one of the bracelets my daughter was selling, but her mom caught her and made sure to pay for it.

Here is a picture of the booth. I did a mock-up on the kitchen counter before going to the market, so I had an idea on how I wanted to place items on the table. I had my copper jam pot and cookbooks as a conversation point. All my jam inventory was under the table;, I only presented one jar of each kind on the table. The cookies were on baking trays, all packaged and ready to go. Signage was handmade as I ran out of time to print things.

@Anna NOh, good. For a second I thought you were having cat food for lunch!

I am not a very crafty person, but I decided to make a banner to personalize our stand a little bit. You can order printed banners for rather cheap, about $20 from what I can tell. But I thought something homemade would convey better that we were selling artisanal products. So I looked around the house for little scraps of fabric. We went to the fabric store and bought really cheap fabric paint and foam brushes (I think we spent less than $5), and we made our own stencils with paper. My daughter sewed the banner on her sewing machine. Then, as the banner was drying on the counter with the paint still fresh, the kitten decided to grab one end of the string and run to the other side of the house... Fortunately, nothing bad happened. A few drops of paint on the floor that were easy to clean, and a very scared kitten once she heard our screams.

It looks like I forgot to take a picture when they got out of the oven, but here are the croquant cookies all packaged, 4 per bag. These are great with tea; they are crunchy with a nice toasted almond flavor, very light.

I have some left and would love to sell them to you, but the difficulty is going to figure out how to ship them! I've never done this... As long as you are not trying to get them before Christmas, I might be able to arrange this. Private message me, and we can talk more.

Yesterday was a clean-out-the-fridge soup. Here are the things I had to use: celery, leek, onion, carrot, parsnip, kale, arugula. I added a couple of potatoes and sundried tomatoes in olive oil that had been forgotten at the back of the fridge. I was thinking blended soup. However as I was cooking it, I realized I had re-created a minestrone of sorts. So at that point I looked for oregano. I didn't have any so I used some weird herbes de provence that I have that are heavy on oregano (weird because they also contain lavender so I rarely use them), also a pinch of Emeril's essence (another effort to use long-forgotten ingredients; the predominant flavors are dried garlic and paprika for a subtle kick). I garnished it with a robust olive oil and a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese. The result was nice for something that was initially random.

Since I had more or less forgotten to buy special ingredients for my cookies, I decided to make my favorite cookie recipe that can be made from practically nothing, the almond croquants from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert. I fortunately had some sliced & toasted almonds on hand (that I keep for making orgeat). I also doubled the recipe and the yield was 63 cookies. Here there are before going into the oven.

Next I made the Snowy-topped brownie drops from Dorie's cookies. I also doubled the recipe. For the chocolate, I realized I had forgotten to buy any but I always have some on hand... I used a mix of Trader Joe's "one pound plus" dark chocolate, and 99% chocolate from Switzerland. I started measuring regular flour and then remembered I wanted to make them gluten-free, so I ended up using Bob's Red Mill all purpose mix. I used the OXO cookie scoop for these and it helped speed up the process. I packaged them in bags of three (one friend complained to me that the problem with odd numbers is that she had to fight with her husband over the last one!). The yield was 48 cookies.

The cookies... First I made the two-bite one-chip cookies (this was the day before the market). I doubled the recipes in Dorie's Cookies and the yield was 137 cookies. I had bought fancy OXO cookie scoops but even the small size was a bit too large, so I ended up scooping them with my OXO teaspoon. These I packaged in little bags of 6. They are good cookies but visually not super interesting, plus you have to explain that they contain a chocolate chip. So maybe not the easiest sell for a market.

Here is the Buddha's hand marmalade. Next time I will try a different citrus mix (the Buddha is quite mild compared to the very acidic calamondin), and I will cut the Buddha's hand a bit more finely.

I really loved your idea but ran out of time. I ever have an opportunity to do this again, what I would do is print and laminate little cards for each jam, and include information about the fruit used, pictures (especially for the most "exotic" ones such as Buddha's hand or calamondin), and suggestions for use. Anything that gets people to stop for a little longer at the booth so they have a chance to look at the products and be tempted. So the market went extremely well. The biggest challenge was transporting canopy, table and products to the location; only a minute walk but these things are heavy. Second biggest challenge was mounting the canopy which apparently requires two people (so they can pull the structure in opposite directions simultaneously). Thankfully someone helped me and the canopy got installed on time. What I wish I had done - information cards (see above), and also offering samples more freely! (I had almost all my jams to try as sample, but most people were too polite to ask!). I sold about 20 jars of jam, mostly to friends/family and friends of friends. I had 10 varieties and a lot of stock (more than 50 jars total). I ended up only making three types of cookies because a lot of other stands were going to sell cookies and I figure there was little point in making more. I pre-packaged them in little bags that were all priced at $2 to keep things simple. The gluten-free brownies were the most popular. I had more than 50 bags of cookies and sold about a dozen, but the rest I brought to holiday parties or ate with coffee. Another thing would be to dress a bit more warmly, because it got really cold once the sun was out! The market lasted for 4 hours and was a ton of fun, so time went really fast. And my daughter was delighted to sell almost all of her little friendship bracelets. Overall a great experience! I will post a few pictures once I've organized them.

That one is the one I am the proudest of. I winged the recipe based on an idea I had in my head, and it's wonderful. Vibrant and complex flavors, perfect set (not too loose and not too firm), and a great yield too (9 jars + 1 sample jar). Here it is on toast.