INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

Tools:
1 1/2    liter sealable jar large funnel 1 sheet cheese cloth coffee
filter or paper towel bottles (4 cups should be enough) apple corer/peeler
Fresh or frozen, but don't try it with sauce. Well, it might work with
cranberry sauce, but I have no idea how to compensate for the jelly and
extra sweetening.
I use Arc jars, with metal bands and a latch-like deal which secure the
glass lid to the glass body, with a rubber ring providing the seal. The
mixture is a little larger than one liter, so make sure you have enough
room if you don't get metric sizes.
First, clean the heck out of your jar. Any faint lingering smell will
become a taste in your liqueur, and since many new jars smell like
chocolate at first, you really want to make sure they're clean. Boiling
water can be good, but make sure you've warmed up your jar with merely hot
water first, or it'll shatter. And if you use the rubber rings like I do,
clean them as well. You can't spend enough time cleaning.
Chop up the cranberries in a blender or food processor, on the lowest
setting, until it's the consistency of grits (Cream of Wheat, for you
Northerners). We recently bought a Cuisinart Classic, and it made the
chopping process a breeze. Make sure they're all chopped up; any berry
still whole won't contribute to the liqueur. Pour into jar. Scrape pith
from the lemon and orange peels with an apple peeler (or whatever, but be
thorough), and put in jar. Pour vodka in jar. Boil sugar and water
together; when sugar is all dissolved, let stand a minute and pour into
jar. Seal the jar quickly, lest the alcohol burn off. Let the mixture steep
for 4 weeks, shaking lightly each day. Store in a dark place.
Note: When I was working with the blender, I found that it was slightly
easier if I pour the chopped cranberries into the jar, and then washed out
the remaining bits from the blender jar using the vodka. Then I tossed in
the peels, and added the sugar-water. Make sure you keep the jar sealed
while you're working on other things.
After steeping, take the jar out and line your big funnel with your cheese
cloth. Put some other jar-like thing underneath the funnel, or you will
pour your mixture all over your tabletop, which is not recommended (I have
tried it myself). Pour mixture through cheese cloth. Gather up the corners
of the cloth, and squeeze the solid material remaining of all the liquid
your strength can muster. Filter again through this funnel, lined with a
coffee filter or paper towel, to get all the lingering solids out. Paper
towels are more porous and let larger particles through, but it goes an
awful lot faster. Solids remaining aren't too much of a problem; they'll
leave yellow rings around the inside of your bottle after a month or two,
but they don't affect the taste that I've noticed.
Clean the heck out of your bottles, too, for precisely the same reasons you
cleaned your jar. Pretty bottles aren't necessary, but they do tend to make
your audience more disposed to liking the contents. Pour the liquid into
your bottle, cork, and you're done. Aging a month may help mellow it a
little, but drinking immediately is still quite good. Notably, one friend
of mine who had kept a bottle for an entire year said it had matured
fabulously.
Yield: about 4 cups
This stuff will last at least a year if unopened (none of mine have
remained unopened for more than a year), exactly one year if opened
seldomly and resealed, and a few months if opened often. If you're unsure,
just make sure it all gets drank at the first opening. Works for me.
One other issue: corking. Corks are porous, and will allow your alcohol to
slowly evaporate, and contribute to the decay of your liqueur over time.
I'm looking into sealing the bottles with paraffin after corking them to
try and combat this problem. But don't be fooled into thinking that corks
can preserve your liqueurs indefinitely.
Posted to Bakery-Shoppe Digest V1 #223 by Shelley Sparks
<ssparks@mailbox.arn.net> on Sep 07, 1997

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