FrogPrincesse

That one is on my list, and I just ordered Robert Simonson's A Proper Drink about the cocktail renaissance.

A Quill which is a Negroni variation with a dash of absinthe. 33 Portland dry gin, Campari, Cocchi vermouth di Torino, St. George absinthe. I put in a couple of sprays of absinthe but will have a heavier hand next time as you could barely detect it.

To drink with cake, yes. To use in cake, I don't think so. You need something with a more concentrated flavor since you are only using a tablespoon in that recipe.

Applejack or apple brandy would be the closest American equivalent.

@Thanks for the CrepesThanks for the reply! I didn't have much choice unfortunately. I contacted a few neighbors but the first ones haven't had a functioning oven for years (no idea how they survive - I use mine every day), and the others weren't home. So the unbaked cake went in the freezer and I am keeping my fingers crossed. There were egg whites but the batter was rather dense overall. Some people in this thread (for example the second post in the discussion) mentioned freezing molten chocolate cakes unbaked, so I remain hopeful for now... The uncooked batter tastes really good and my daughter was trying to convince me to eat it as is!!!

@BonVivantThese pastries do look tasty! 10 for 2 euros?! What a deal.

True? Well, this is the Mexican forum so it's going to be rice-based, right? From my understanding, it's Spanish horchata that uses tiger nuts (this was discussed upthread).

Can you freeze a cake before baking it? I had a cake all ready to go, and then my Miele oven decided to... do a little impromptu fireworks show... !!! This is a basic marble cake with baking powder in it.

Putting it all together... Here is my current favorite recipe. Technique Blend rice and almonds Add water, sugar, cinnamon, and blend again Let sit overnight at room temperature Fine strain into a nut milk bag Ratios 100% water (no milk) (4 cups) 2:1 rice to almonds (1 cup rice and 1/2 cup almonds) 2.7:1 liquid to solids ratio (by volume) 67 g/L sugar (1/3 cup sugar for 4 cups of liquid) 1/2 tsp cinnamon This is a bit concentrated but this amount fits in my blender exactly. I feel that 1 to 2 more cups of water could be added. One solution is to add it when the final drink is dispensed and store the "concentrated" horchata in the fridge. This is what it looks like after sitting on the counter all night...

Another side note. The horchata at the farmers' market seems to be mysteriously stable, whereas mine always settles with the fine solids migrating to the bottom of the bottle (or glass) over time. A quick shake fixes the issue, but I am very curious as to how you can avoid this sedimentation. I am wondering if it's because the solids are significantly smaller in size (because they use a finer filter for example), or because they add something to keep everything suspended. I wonder what happens if you use rice flour instead of rice to make horchata? Maybe that's the secret! ("Instant horchata" is what seems to happen based on a quick search. Is that considered cheating? I have to try this!)

After this of course I had to go in the opposite direction. I picked a recipe that seemed quite rich with both milk and almonds! This is the recipe from Kenji López-Alt in Serious Eats, so I knew this would be a reliable/tested method. Recipe highlights Grind rice and almonds in blender Add sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, water and milk and blend again Let sit in the fridge overnight Strain Ratios 2:1 water to milk (1 quart water and 2 cups milk) 1:1 rice to almonds (1 cup rice and 1 cup almonds) 3:1 liquid to solids ratio (by volume) 100 g/L sugar (2/3 cup sugar for 6 cups of liquid) With the almonds, the recipe just specifies blanched almonds. Other recipes toast them first. I used roasted blanched & sliced almonds from TJ's that are a little more flavorful/nutty than regular blanched almonds. It's all a matter of personal preference/mood. By then I had finally acquired a nut bag (about $10 on amazon). And I have to say, the stuff really changed my life. Not only does it make the straining process so much easier (the bag has a little drawstring so you close it once everything has been poured inside, and then you can press without worrying that things are going to fall out of the cheesecloth. Also it's fabulous for making cheese!) Impressions This is a very creamy very rich horchata. Honestly I am not crazy about the milk in it. There is just too much of it, it practically tastes like almond-flavored milk. However the allmonds are great. Of course with the almonds, the drink is very reminiscent of one of my favorite things, orgeat.

Here is Morgenthaler's no-nonsense back-to-basics horchata. Recipe highlights Pre-soak rice (California long grain rice) and cinnamon* stick broken into pieces in hot water Let sit overnight at room temperature Blend until smooth, or as smooth as possible (ie, for a rather long time if you are using a regular house Hamilton old blender like me) Fine strain** And... done!!! Can it be that simple?! (It is) Ratios 100% water (no milk) ratio (3 cups = 24 ounces) 3:1 liquid to rice ratio (by volume) (1 cup rice) 133 g/L sugar (1/2 cup sugar for 3 cups of liquid)*** *He says to use the softer Ceylon cinnamon and not the super hard cassia bark that you see everywhere. I think that's a very handy tip. It tastes a lot fresher when you grind your own of course but almost all the recipes call for already ground cinnamon. **Here he specifies to use a "nut milk bag". I remembered another one of my virtual cocktail friends mentioning such a contraption. The thing always sounded super weird to me and I never researched it. Anyway, when I made Morgenthaler's recipe I didn't have a nut bag and used the same metal strainer + nylon cheesecloth combination I had used before. But I decided to investigate the mysterious nut bag everyone seemed to rave about for future experiments. ***The dude seems to have somewhat of a sweet tooth. I can't say I am shocked because his cocktail recipes tend to be on the sweet side. I reduced the amount to about half, The result was good but a bit basic (haha). I thought it was somewhat lacking in richness, but it was solid, and I liked how easy it was to make (except for the straining which is messy when you don't have the famous nut bag!).

Attempt #2 was from another cocktail-related source. No other than Jeff Morgenthaler, the 2016 American bartender of the year at TOTC. But I digress... I liked that he had a few guiding principles when developing his recipe: As a result, he doesn't use milk and therefore the horchata is not so prone to spoilage. I think that's great because that's one less thing to worry about if you take your horchata to a picnic. (As a side note, at the farmers markets where I often buy a cup of horchata, it's kept in a giant container - large plastic barrels also used for aguas frescas, at ambient temperature, and served on ice. It doesn't contain milk. Adding milk might be good for texture but creates storage issues and also defeats the purpose of a drink that is more or less a milk substitute. Typically, horchata doesn't contain almonds either. Just rice, water, cinnamon, (lots of) sugar as one of the vendors told me; it is quite simple.) Horchata and a tamale at the farmers' market

Where are the horchata experts? Here was my first attempt a couple of years ago. I made it to use it in a cocktail (of course) and the recipe was from PDT. Highlights of the recipe: The rice ("uncooked white long-grain) is ground with the water in a blender The mixture is left to stand for 12 hours at room temperature The mixture is strained (it doesn't say how, but I used a metal strainer lined with a nylon cheesecloth) Milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and sugar are added and the mixture is blended again Ratios 4:1 water to milk ratio (40 ounces water and 10 oz whole milk) 6:1 liquid to rice ratio (by weight) (8 oz rice) 25 g/L sugar (3 tablespoons of sugar for 50 ounces of liquid) I remember not being too crazy about the texture which was on the chalky side, and overall it was a bit lacking in flavor. It tasted a bit thin and wasn't very sweet.

You could make it on crushed ice, with a super energetic shake to emulsify the egg white! I bet that would work too.

Josh from Inu A Kena posted his findings about a tasting of the 12 white rhum agricoles that are currently available in the US. This is a great read for us agricole lovers! https://inuakena.com/spirit-reviews/agricole-challenge/

All these gorgeous pasta pictures by @ProfessionalHobbit made me crave fresh cavatelli! So I made a batch (using fresh homemade ricotta and grated tangerine zest) and froze them for future use.

Inspired by AOC (Suzanne Goin): Grilled peach salad with burrata, cumin, and toasted almonds (+ mint and plenty of sliced shallots). This normally called for arugula which would have been an ideal choice (bitterness to counteract the sweetness of the peaches & burrata), but I had forgotten to buy some and used a lettuce & radicchio mix instead. The dressing was a bit heavy on the cumin. Otherwise this is a super tasty salad when peaches are in season. Interestingly, the mix of cumin with mint strongly evoked shiso to me, which I actually realized is a type of mint. I wonder if that was intentional. I had leftover so I had the salad again with some prosciutto (on buttered toasted baguette). A perfect lunch!

Nobody commented and I am still troubled by this. The other change I've noticed is that the price seems to have increased significantly - I paid more than $30 for a new bottle (which is only 375 mL)! Anyway, I had no choice as I was out and didn't feel like trying to make my own. I should have kept some from the old bottle but I didn't, so this is purely from memory. The new product seems less viscous, a bit more citrus-forward, less intensely allspice flavored (to the point where the old product was borderline bitter/tannic). I think it will be actually a bit more mixable (I loved the old one but tended to reduce the amount as it was extremely concentrated!).

You have to make it happen some day so you can try my drinks!!! As for the False Idol drinks, I tried a few but more studying seems required... Here is an everything but the kitchen sink drink. These are fun when you happen to have all the ingredients! Voodoo Grog (Trader Vic via Total Tiki) with Clement VSOP rhum agricole, Plantation 5 Stars Barbados rum, lime & white grapefruit, honey, St Elizabeth allspice dram (+cinnamon syrup as I ran short), BG Reynolds passion fruit syrup, egg white, grated nutmeg. This all goes in a blender with crushed ice. This is very pleasant but the aged agricole is somewhat buried in there, which is a bit of a shame. The Clement VSOP, which is one of the more reasonably-priced aged agricoles out there, is on the mellow side, which is probably part of the "problem".

I've been making a lot of Mexican-style horchata lately. It's such a nice cooling drink when it's hot outside. I've made it with the rice I normally have in my pantry, which is Trader Joe's white basmati rice. But I was wondering if there was a type of rice that was favored in horchata? Most recipes specify "long grain white rice" and that's about it. Someone mentioned brown rice which seems like an interesting twist but I am mostly interested in white rice varieties.

Personally, I like cavatelli with roasted bell peppers and Italian sausages (and I make them with a little hand-cranked machine). It's not a pasta shape you see too often but they are delicious!

It's not exactly like the recipe is a ton of work...

From Diffords Sound boring to me...

You know, sometimes it's awfully nice to enjoy things directly and not through the lens of an iPhone! About the technical issues, in summary, large tropical waterfalls + tiki torches = ... extra rain showers from the fire sprinklers. But this was fairly minor, nobody got hurt or even wet (just the floor), and everything was resolved shortly after, in time for the next group! I will be back soon of course. I could tell you about the secret entrance, but then I'd have to kill you... So it's probably best if you figure that one out on your own!