Tis the Season…

Today I’d like to enlist your tastebuds on a gastronomic sleigh ride.  Watch us as we journey thru the seasonal bounty of apple cider by fusing it with a little bacon and maple.  Huh?  Oh yeah.  Spiked maple bacon apple cider.  Now you can use that left over bacon as a garnish for something…

The ingredients are redily available (if you don’t live in a dry county).  For this cider recipe you’ll need the following:

1 Half Gallon Apple Cider

1 Bottle of Berentzen Apple Schnapps

Wrights Maple cured thick sliced Bacon

1 bottle of maple flavoring or pure maple syrup (we used flavoring to not make the potion too sweet)

hickory smoked salt

This is a two step process.  The first step is infusing the bacon dripping into the apple schnapps.  This is a real easy, virtually painless process, but it will need to be done the day before cider making.  The first step in the infusion is to fry about half the package of bacon.  Fry it slowly, so the rendering, which you’ll be using won’t get a burnt flavor.  Strain off the rendering to get the chunks of meat left in the cooking process out of the rendering. You should do this while the grease is still hot enough to handle safely.  Now that you have just pure bacon rendering left over, pour a bit of schnapps into a glass to make room.  Put 1/4 cup of the liquified rendering in the bottle of schnapps.  Fill the bottle back with the schnapps you poured out initially.  Re-seal the apple schnapps bottle now and place on it’s side in a safe place overnight.  Shake it occasionally.

The next day, empty contents of the bottle into a large plastic cup or pitcher that will hold all that liquid.  You might need to warm up the apple schnapps to soften the bacon rendering to pour out of the bottle.  Place that cup or bowl into the freezer for a few hours so the bacon rendering will congeal and rise to the top of the container you are using.  When done, the top of your container should have a solid film on the top and especially the sides of the container, scrape off the film and solids and pour remaining liquid thru a filter (we use a coffee maker with a few paper filters inside).  Pour liquid thru filter, back into the bottle if you so care and procees to the fixin’ cider part.

To prepare the cider beverage just put all of this into the pot and bring to a near boil and serve.

The half gallon of cider

1/2 cup of bacon infused apple schnapps

a few drops of maple flavoring to taste*

a pinch of hickory smoked salt

* we put a cocktail straw into the bottle part way, placed a finger on the top, and draw back straw and place on top of the cider in the pot and release your finger.  The liquid will pour out and empty into the pot o cider.

Serve with a crisp slice of bacon as a garnish.  HUZZAH!  Merry Christmas from the Oxford Falls family.