Atholl Brose Oatmeal Cookies

When you make Atholl Brose, you’ll have leftover whiskey-soaked oats. This is something worthwhile you can make with them.  These are really quite good.

 

Ingredients:

½ cup oats, soaked in whiskey, now ¾ cup in volume

3 TBSP salted butter, softened

¼ cup brown sugar, packed

2 TBSP granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 egg yolk, large

¼ tsp vanilla extract (bourbon vanilla is best)

⅓ cup all purpose flour

¼ tsp cinnamon

healthy pinch of salt

Instructions:

• Pre-heat oven to 325°F (160°C).

• Mix butter and both sugars until well blended.

• Add egg yolk & vanilla. Mix well.

• Add whiskey-soaked oats. Mix it together well.

• Ideally, mix all dry ingredients together separately & add to these wet ingredients. (But I just mixed them all in, and mixed really well.)

• Spoon scoops onto a silicon baking mat on a baking sheet, or use parchment. Space about 2 inches. I got 8 medium sized cookies from this recipe.

• Bake for 6 – 8 minutes. Watch carefully; these will want to spread out a lot.

• Cool on the silicon mat for a few minutes and then on a cooling rack.

Suggestion: Serve with Athol Brose. Or vanilla ice cream.

Atholl Brose

Ingredients:

½ cups oatmeal (steel cut preferred, but not necessary)

¾ cup filtered water

¾ cup decent Scotch whiskey (I used Trader Joe's Single Malt Highland house brand, but a competent blended whiskey is just fine for this.)

1 TBSP honey

¼ cup double cream (The cream is optional.)

Instructions:

• Soak the oatmeal in the water for 24 hours.

• Add the Scotch. Soak for 36 additional hours.

• Strain the oats from the Scotch. (Use the oats for cookies.)

• Add (warmed) honey & cream

• Whisked until well mixed.

• Chill & serve.

Because of the cream, store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Dairy-free Peach & Scotch Bonnet Pepper Ice Cream

Combining a little bit of heat with sweetness and vanilla.

Equipment

1 Ice Cream Maker
1 Blender or immersion blender

Ingredients
4 large egg yolks
⅔ cups cane sugar
1 can coconut milk
1 can coconut cream
¼ teaspoon salt
1 TBSP bourbon vanilla flavoring
2TBSP + 1 oz brandy (We used Courvoisier)
1½ pounds of sliced fresh peaches (We started with 2 pounds of frozen fresh peaches, and ate about half a pound in preparation.)

Instructions
Prep your ice cream maker so that it is ready to make ice cream.

Prepare Scotch Bonnet pepper:
• Mince very, very fine.
• Soak in brandy in 2 TBSP brandy for a few days.
NB: I started with a dehydrated Scotch Bonnet pepper. I chopped it fine & rehydrated in brandy, marinating it for a week, mincing it finer after rehydrating. Next time: consider grinding dried pepper to powder & marinating the powder.)

Prepare peaches:
• If frozen, thaw.
• Stew gently in a medium saucepan over a low heat until softened.
• Divide in half. Blend half to pretty small texture. Stir in 1oz brandy.
• Cut the other half of the peaches into small pieces. (Recommended: keep stewing these until they begin to get soft.)

Prepare Custard:

• Combine egg yolks, coconut milk, sugar, and salt in a blender and process until smooth.
• Pour mixture into a medium sauce pan, and heat over medium low just until steamy. You should see little bubbles forming around the edge of the pan. Do not boil.
• Strain peppers from brandy. Stir in the finely minced, marinated pepper, reserving brandy.
• Continue to cook the coconut milk mixture until it has thickened to the consistency of a thin custard that will coat the back of a spoon. This will take longer than you expect.
• Remove the mixture from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract, brandy from peppers & blended peaches.
• Re-blend again until smooth.

Refrigerate the mixture for 2-4 hours, or until the custard mixture is very cold.

Churn Ice Cream:
Pour cooled mixture into ice cream maker and churn until partly/largely frozen. This should take about 30-40 minutes.
When you’ve finished churning, the ice cream will have the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Pour into freezer-safe container. Make some openings in the soft ice cream and pour stewed peach pieces in to make ripples of peaches.
For soft-serve style ice cream, serve immediately. For a harder scoopable ice cream, place in the freezer for 2-3 hours.
Take out and place on the counter for 10 minutes to soften for serving.

This is actually pretty good.

Barrel-Aged Beer Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• 4 egg yolks
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup barrel-aged beer
• 1 cup heavy cream

Instructions:

In a medium bowl, quickly whisk the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture becomes a pale yellow. 

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, bring the beer and cream to a simmer. Do not allow it to boil.

Slowly pour the beer mixture over the egg mixture, whisking constantly to temper the yolks. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until it thickens. Pour the mixture through a strainer into a mixing bowl set over ice and stir until cool. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Easy Hard Cider

This is a low-alcohol (theoretically around 3%) hard cider that’s quick and easy to make. Yummy, and sweet. 

Ingredients: 

1 gallon apple juice or cider (without preservatives)

1 to 1½ tsp yeast *

* Don’t use bread yeast. Use beer or ale yeast. Champaign yeast will make a dryer cider. I intend to try Belgian yeast one time. You can use wild apple yeast (from organic apple peels) in a manner similar to sourdough bread starter, but that’s more complex.

 

Special Equipment: 

Fermentation lock (or substitute)

Rubber stopper for bottle, with hole for Fermentation lock

Gallon jar (glass or plastic)

Instructions: 

Leave apple juice at room temperature. Remove a cup or so of the juice to a bowl, and heat to body temperature. Add the yeast to the warm juice to activate. When it starts bubbling, return it to the gallon jug and mix thoroughly.

Install the fermentation lock into the stopper, and seal the bottle. (It needs water in it to work right.)

Set the jar in a warm place to ferment for a week: a little longer for drier cider, a little shorter for sweeter cider. During this week, bubbles are good!

The next weekend, bottle your cider. Use containers that can handle pressure:

• Re-use (pint size?) soda-pop labels.
• Swing-type self-locking (“Lightning type closure”) bottles
• Crown caps (traditional bottle tops: requires a bottle opener to open, and requires a capping tool to seal).

Let the bottles set in a warm place for a day or a little more to carbonate. The pop bottles have an advantage: it’s easy to tell when they’ve carbonated enough: when the bottles are hard (as they would be when they’re full of fresh soda pop at the store), it’s enough.

Store the sealed bottles in the refrigerator.

Consume some time between “as soon as it’s cold” and three weeks or so.

Comment: If you let it ferment too long, you’ll need to age it (a year or more)

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Update: I've made 3 batches by now.

I added a step to the process: our home isn't incredibly warm, so I filled a pot with warm water, and put the fermenting gallon into it to keep it warm.

In the second batch, I heated it too much, late in the process, and killed the yeast, so the cider tasted good enough, but there was no carbonation to it.

In the third batch, I heated it often, but much more gently. Carbonation is fine, but it's over-fermented, and as a result, it's drier than is best.

I'm learning the process.

Basic Homemade Fruit Liqueur Recipe:

You can make liqueur from just about any fruit: apples, apricots, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, citrus, cranberries, peaches, pineapple, raspberries or even a mixture of fruit. My favorites are lemon, raspberry and cranberry, but they are all good. Fresh fruit is always best, but frozen unsweetened fruit also works in a pinch.

4 cups fruit of your choice (or 12 oz. bag of fresh cranberries)
2-3 cups of vodka or brandy
Optional spices such as cinnamon sticks, whole allspice or vanilla bean

Cheesecloth and coffee filters
Large funnel for straining & filling bottles
1 cup sugar
½ cup water

Wash fruit and remove stems or pits if necessary (depending upon fruit used). Cut large fruit (like apples or peaches) into bite-size pieces. Smaller fruit (such as strawberries or cherries) should be cut in half to release juices. Cranberries, should be chopped in a food processor for best results. Blueberries or Raspberries can be left whole.

Place fruit in a large, clean glass container. (I use my collection of vintage canning jars for this purpose. But any quart size or large jar will work.) Add 2-3 cups vodka or brandy or enough to cover the fruit. Some fruit will float and that is okay. Add any spices that you wish. Stir the mixture and cover the container tightly. Set container on a shelf, away from heat or sunlight for at least 4 weeks. Stir or shake occasionally.

After steeping, strain the mixture using several layers of cheesecloth. Once removed from the alcohol, store the “drunken fruit” in the refrigerator and use within a few days as a dessert topping, addition to tea bread, or addition to a dessert sauce.

Take the remaining flavored alcohol and strain again using fresh cheesecloth or better yet, coffee filters to get a clear liquid with no cloudiness.

Meanwhile in a small saucepan, combine sugar and water. Heat to a boil, stirring constantly and cook for one minute or until the bubbling mixture turns clear. Remove from heat and set aside until completely cooled. (About 1 hour)

Pour half the sugar syrup into the alcohol base, stir and taste for sweetness. Some fruits are very tart

and will require all of the sugar syrup. Others will only need a hint of sweetness. Extremely tart fruits (like cranberries) may even need a second batch of sugar syrup to really create a truly sweet liqueur. This is a personal preference, so use your own judgment. Continue adding syrup until you reach desired flavor.

Bottle your liqueurs in clean, decorative bottles and label with a date.  The liqueurs will have the best flavor after a few months of sitting on the shelf (aging). They will begin to lose their bright color and some flavor after one year but they will not “go bad” because the alcohol is the preservative. I usually have no problem using them up within one year.