Oh god.

So, I found a recipe for malt flavored ice cream. I like malts. Malt sounds delightful. They even recommend swilring in dulce de leche. AWESOME!

No.

I made the batch of malt base and did this odd sous-vide to cook the custard which worked pretty well for not having the “real” equipment (A freezer bag and a pot of hot water worked fine). I turned half the batch as is and the other half with dulce de leche. The recipe says to use sweetened condensed milk to really give it that store bought feel if you can’t get a hold of Cremodan. Great! But now I have this half can of sweetened condensed milk. WHat should I do with it? Make my own dulce de leche!

No. Do not want. Don’t ever try.

This…substance does not swirl. In fact it sets up like fucking concrete. No worries, say I. I’ll nuke it a bit then swirl it in. Nope. chunks of milky sweet boulders. Then I saw that I had some cajeta I bought at the farmer’s market. Surely this will…no. Not at all. *sigh* It’s all still tasty but just an utter pain in the hole.

Next up, avocado!

I used Alton Brown’s recipe and used whole milk from a local dairy. This was gonna be great! I mix it up and it is damned tasty. I stick it in the fridge…and forgot about it for about 5 days. No problem right.

Oh you would be wrong. So very wrong. The milk went sour or something. It…ugh. It was bad. I almost cried. So, I tried again that weekend. With not so awesome milk and a different recipe that called for coconut milk to make it really rich. Why, why did I change the recipe. This one was not as good but I turned it anyway and it’s still…not so good. Dammit. Now, maybe a scoop of this plus a scoop of candy and malt might be good.

Now, raspberry sorbet.

You know what? I’m just not even gonna go into details. If you have a known-good recipe, just follow it. Don’t try to wing it based on memory.

1. Meringue cookies: SUCCESS! They were pretty damn good!
2. Jam/jelly: 4 dozen so far. Double berry sangria, pomegranate-cherry, apple pie (with real apples…looks like applesauce 🙁 ), and a pomegranate-cherry-Christmas Wine one.
3. Bourbon caramel sauce: That shit takes too long to make. Maybe next year. When I have more time. (wheee!)
4. 3 flavors of marshmallows: SUCCESS! The last batch of chocolate ones that I took to work were described as tasting like Count Chocula without the milk.
5. Chocolate Cherry Bourbon bark: meh. The cherries were too wet and cause the chocolate to look like it was moldy. The second batch seized so bad I tossed it. I might try again with slightly better directions.
6. Honey Caramels: Nope. didn’t even try.

Now here is a list of stuff I did manage to get right that I hadn’t planned to do:

1. 3 batches of fudge. I might make more since I have more chips. It’s quick and easy and people seem to like it okay.
2. A Longhorn patterned no sew fleece throw. I made one for my mom in Cowboys pattern a couple of years ago. I swore I would never make another. Apparently I lied. My back still aches. Those things take minimum two hours to make for an adult sized one. I think I’ll move on to making baby blankets. Or pillows.

So..two is not really a list, huh. I plan on making more jams/jellies because I ran out of time and got started way late this year. I’m going to experiment with IKEA juice drink concentrates. Ooooohhh…

Cherries were on sale a couple of weeks ago. I made 4 12oz and 5 1oz jars of nice cherry jam! No pictures. Of course. Because this is the poor neglected bastard blog.

That week I also made 3 quart jars of pickles from cucumbers I got at the farmers’ market. Two jars were kosher dills from a recipe I found online (using fresh dill and a bit of basil from my garden) and one was kosher dill with a bit of curry powder. We’ll see how those turn out

I know I know I know. I was bad. I didn’t update my holiday crafty crap like I said I would. So here’s a recap with pictures:

1. Lime-cello
2. Cherry Bourbon
3. Cucumber Gin
4. 3 batches of honey caramels
5. 6 dozen jellies/jams (yes, dozen)
6. 3 batches of marshmallows
7. 2 batches of fudge
8. 3 jars of pickles
9. 1 jar of pickled asparagus
10. 2 jars of pickled green beans
11. 2 batches of fruit cakes (6 mini loaves each)

11-6 weekend:

• 2 batches of caramels
• fruitcake recipe #2  (less dried fruits, more candied traditional fruits)
• 2 batches of prickled green beans
• 1 batch of pickled asparagus
• lime vodka infusion sweetened to make it limcello.

11-13 weekend goals:

• *drumroll please*  JELLY!

Between this, homework for two classes, and a project; it’s gonna be a long weekend.

53 pounds of canning jars and other assorted packaging is motoring (i’ll be damned if I splurge for air shipping for some jars!) its way here. 53 pounds. 2 boxes.

Also, just ordered 1.5 pounds of vanilla beans. WHO NEEDS THAT MANY VANILLA BEANS?? Not all for me though.