Homebrew Underground

This is a quick and easy dessert that is delicious and unusual. It is made with kefir and fresh strawberries with a little sugar or sweetener plus blackberry liqueur. But for the blackberry liqueur, it would be somewhat healthy and good for you.

Mix kefir, blackberry liqueur and sweetener in a bowl. Stir until everything is thoroughly mixed together. Slice about 4 or 5 medium to large strawberries in a dessert dish. Pour the kefir mix over the top. Serve immediately.

This is a recipe you can make with either your own homemade coffee liqueur or with Kahlua® or homemade Kahlua. Brownies are perfect as a liqueur pastry to make with coffee liqueur.

This recipe is made from scratch – not from a mix – and therefore of good quality. It is relatively quick and easy, too.

Shown below is a shot of the ingredients:

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat.

Make sure the butter is completely melted and then add melted butter and cocoa to a mixing bowl.

Mix cocoa and butter with a rubber spatula into a smooth paste.

Add flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and salt.

Thoroughly mix all ingredients into a batter.

Next, add the pecans and liqueur. Use either your own homemade coffee liqueur or Kahlua®.

Thoroughly mix everything together.

Preheat the oven to 325°. Flour an 8 x 8 baking dish to keep the brownies from sticking when they are baked. You can use a vegetable fat product like Crisco® or a non-stick spray like Pam®.

Pour the mixture into the floured baking dish.

Bake at 325° for about 40 – 45 minutes. Poke a toothpick into the brownies to check to see if they are done. If the toothpick comes out clean, pull them out of the oven immediately.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes or so, then slice into 2 inch squares.

Part III – Baking The Turnovers

Preparing the Dough

Spread a little flour over a cutting board or rolling surface and carefully unroll the pie dough. Tip: Make sure to check the expiration date of the pie dough. If it is too old and dry, it will crack and split when you try to unroll it.

Using a rolling pin, roll out the pie dough until it is thin (a thin crust is one of the qualities that will make a good turnover). It should be about 13 inches in diameter.

Cut the dough into 4 quarters.

Spread The Filling and Fold Each Turnover

Spread a small amount of berry filling on each quarter. Don’t use too much, otherwise it will just spill out while baking. Use a little more than a tablespoon each.

Leave about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch margin all the way around the filling in each of the turnovers.

Fold each one over into a wedge.

Use the handle of the wooden spoon to crimp down the edges to seal them.

Using a fork, poke some air holes in each one like in the shot below.

Baking The Turnovers

Preheat the oven to 400°. Place the turnovers on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes or until the edges are a light brown color.

Remove from oven and spread lemon glaze over each one with a brush. Note the berry filling that oozed out during baking. I used too much filling on these.

Allow to cool for about 10 – 15 minutes and serve fresh and warm.

Part II – Making the Lemon Glaze

While the berry filling is cooling, prepare the lemon glaze. Shown below is a shot of the ingredients and a glass citrus juicer: evaporated milk (condensed milk), powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar) and fresh lemon.

Use a small saucepan and add the evaporated milk and lemon juice. The sugar is off to the side in a measuring cup.

Carefully heat the liquid over a low flame to below boiling point. The sugar is in a glass bowl off to the side.

Gradually add to the sugar a few drops at a time and mix it into the sugar.

When it is the proper consistency, set it aside until after baking.

Continue to Blackberry Liqueur Turnovers – Part III

Some of the tastiest pastries you can make from the leftover strainings from blackberry liqueur are blackberry liqueur turnovers. They are very easy to make and they go over very big at parties and gatherings.

Two of the ingredients in the blackberry liqueur recipe is lemon zest and lemon juice. The strainings will contain small amounts of macerated lemon zest. Lemon is a very harmonious flavor with the blackberries. The lemon flavor is enhanced in this recipe by adding a lemon sugar glaze over the baked turnovers. That is one quality that makes this recipe special.

Part I – Making the Filling

Shown below is a shot of the ingredients used in this recipe: sugar, corn starch, butter and blackberries. In this example I will be making a half-batch — in other words I divided the amounts of all the ingredients in half. I am using two boxes of pie crusts. There are 2 pie crusts per box. This half-batch will make 16 turnovers.

Start by adding the blackberries, sugar and water in a saucepan.

Cook over a medium flame, crushing the berries with a wooden spoon.

After a few minutes, whisk the corn starch into the mixture. Stir thoroughly until all the the corn starch is dissolved and the mixture clarifies (the corn starch is no longer white).

When the corn starch has thoroughly dissolved and the mixture begins to thicken, add the butter. Stir until melted.

Remove from heat and add the blackberry liqueur strainings from a batch of blackberry liqueur. Stir thoroghly to mix all the ingredients.

Allow to cool in the refrigerator or freezer until the filling is the consistency of spreadable preserves.

Continue to Blackberry Liqueur Turnovers – Part II

Tasty Cookies From Macerated Chopped Almonds

When you make almond liqueur, you can save the macerated chopped almonds and use them to make almond liqueur cookies. This is a very easy recipe because the cookies are made with prepared cookie dough available at most grocery stores. These cookies will be a big hit for parties and gatherings. They are a perennial favorite. Use Pillsbury Create ‘n Bake™ cookie dough for Sugar Cookies.

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Place the cookie dough in the freezer to chill it down very cold to make it easy to slice. Chilling the dough keeps it from getting sticky when it is handled. Place the chilled cookie dough on a cutting board and cut off the two metal clips from the ends, then carefully cut the plastic wrapper lengthwise to expose the dough.

2. Cut the roll into slices 1/4 to 5/16 inches thick. Be careful not to make them too thick because they will spread when baked. You should have about 16 slices when done.

3. Spread them out on ungreased cookie sheets about 3 to 4 inches apart. Allow room for them to spread out when baked. Use the photo below as a guide for arranging them.

4. Now, bring out your baggie of saved chopped almonds from your batch of almond liqueur. They will add a unique almond flavor with very little alcohol. Most of the alcohol will be baked off leaving only the remaining flavor.

5. Using a regular dinner table teaspoon, place a small amount (approximately 1 heaping teaspoon … use a measuring spoon) in the center of each cookie on the cookie sheet. Don’t overdo it. Use the photo below as a guide.

6. Bake for approximately 10 minutes or until the cookies are a golden brown color. When you start to see a light brown color around the edges, pull them out of the oven. Set them aside to cool for a few minutes.

7. Use a metal spatula and remove them from the cookie sheets and place on a paper plate or other ceramic plate or dish. Serve ‘em warm … they have a surprise in the center!

In a previous post on making blackberry liqueur, I mentioned that you could save the strainings when straining and filtering the liqueur after maceration. In this post I will show you how to make Blackberry Liqueur Pie.

In this example I used ready-made, refrigerated "unroll and bake" pie crust for 9 inch pies – available in the refrigerated section of your local supermarket. This is fast and convenient, but you can also make your own crust. Later, I will give you my recipe for a better organic pie crust. You will need two crusts for this pie.

Step One: Mixing The Ingredients

First, preheat the oven to 375°. Next, add the sugar into a medium sized bowl.

Add the thawed berries and then the leftover strainings, mix together partially then add the corn starch. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.

StepTwo: Preparing The Pie Shell

Line a metal pie pan or glass pie plate with one of the crusts. Just unroll it and gently press it into the plate. Dot the bottom of the crust with butter, then pour the mixture into the pie shell. Then dot the top of the pie filling with butter before putting on the top crust.

Roll out a second crust onto a cutting board, then using a knife, cut it down the middle, dividing it in half. Then, divide each half into 4 strips, approx 1 1/4 inch wide each.

Peel out 4 of the strips from one of the halves and place them onto the pie in a parallel arrangement, placing the longest strips near the center and the shorter strips towards the edges. Repeat the process for the other 4 strips in a crosswise manner.

Turn the overlapping edges under the pie shell that lines the plate, then crimp down the edges all the way around for a neat crust.

Step Three: Baking The Pie

Bake the pie for about 45 minutes, or until the crust is slightly browned. Cool for about 30 to 45 minutes at room temperature and serve … you’ll never be able to get this at Marie Calendars!

Organic Pie Crust

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