Homemade liqueur (woohoo...eventually)

We are an apartment of projects. We don't own a house, so we can't try and construct furniture in our workshop or dedicate a room to that floor loom I've wanted to have magically appear since that fiber arts class in college or construct an entire second story to our house (Julie's sister Stacy and her husband Chris are in the midst of doing this right now). So, instead, Julie makes felt dolls and I write my dissertation and we both pick out recipes to try. Mostly these recipes are the sort that we eat in one night or, if it's a dessert, hopefully over at least a couple days. Others, like jam, are about putting something away for later, and for creating resonably priced presents, so that we can be seen as cheap but thoughtful come gift-giving times.

Two years ago, inspired by a friend's efforts at homemade limoncello, we decided to give it a try ourselves. This led to further experimentation with other variations on the citrus zest front (first orange, then lemon-lime, then orange-grapfruit) all of which were tasty in their way. Then last year, after a summer of picking fruit for jam and left with more cherries than we knew waht to do with, I started looking up other liqueur recipes online and took out some books from the library. We produced a fabulous cherry liqueur, then some quite tasty apple jack, then some good smooth blueberry liqueur, and finally the amazing toasted walnut and honey liqueur you see above. I made a triple batch using half and half vodka and brandy, added a stick of cinnamon and a whole clove for the initial steeping period and used a local honey from the farmers' market for part of the sweetener. After just three months of steeping and aging it's smooth and delicious with complex nut and honey flavors, as well as little bits of spice that slip in.

The ingredients aren't cheap, though they're propotionally much less expensive than buying such liqueurs commercially, and you'll need to buy both aging and bottling containers, but the biggest thing required for making these liqueurs is patience. Most will be ready to drink in two months, but some, like the cherry deserve more like six and all of them will become smoother if they're put down for a while. The strawberry liqueur pictured above was just separated from its fruit (which went into a delicious but boozy bundt cake) and will need to age for at least another month in order to loose that harsh liquor taste and have the fruit come to the front (it smells great though, so I have high hopes.

Below are the three liqueurs we have steeping right now: raspberry, yellow cherry, and a big batch of sour cherry. The raspberry should be ready to strain in a couple weeks and will need to age for about a month after that. The cherries will hopefully be ready for gifts around Christmas.