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Some say there's nothing better than chocolate... and there's a school of thought out there that maybe booze is one of the finest inventions man ever made... so imagine, just imagine, if you could combine the two at the drop of a hat, without expertise or great expense and get the smooth comforting deliciousness of chocolate followed by that boozey warm fuzziness of a cheeky shot of vodka..... just call me your early Christmas Fairy.
Oh, and thank my old school friend Aely for prompting me into this recipe - she was looking for nice presents she could make for relatives and this one is easy and would look great served up in a gold painted decorative bottle.
Make a couple of bottles though - at a party, it goes quick :)
You need a 200g bar of chocolate for every 750ml bottle of vodka you want to make into this lovely liqueur. Milk chocolate works better than dark for this recipe but experimenting with flavoured chocolate is also good - Mint Aero in particular is delicious!
Also, a word of warning: be patient when the chocolate is melting, you don't want to overheat the vodka to try and speed things up because it will all evaporate off very quickly.
1. Break up the chocolate into pieces small enough to fit through the neck of your vodka bottle.
2. Boil a deep pan of water and when it gets to a nice rolling boil, turn off the gas but leave the pan standing on your stove. While the water's heating, stuff all the chocolate pieces into the bottle of vodka (you might need to pour yourself a good healthy vodka and tonic with a nice wedge of fresh lime to help with proceedings and to make space for the chocolate, but that's no great hardship).
3. Stand the bottle of vodka in the pan with the lid partially off - you want it to prevent the vodka from evaporating off too quick, but you don't want it on tight or the bottle might pop!
3. Let the vodka stand in the pan, swirling the bottle to move the melting chocolate around periodically.
4. Once all the chocolate is melted you can pour it into a decorative bottle if you're giving it as a gift, or just pop it in the fridge to chill and serve it neat, over ice, or in a martini glass with crushed ice and milk to make a wickedly good boozey chocolate sundae martini :)
So, I've been a little quiet on the old recipe front lately but you'll be pleased to hear that's not from lack of cooking! Halloween last week had me very busy. I'm a big fan of themed food, especially for parties, mostly because it challenges you not to just make things that taste nice but to find a way of being creative with the ingredients to fit with the theme too.
I made some of my pumpkin cupcakes but as mini ones - to do this, just follow the recipe but cook them at 150C/ 320F for just 15 minutes, then to decorate them I put some black food colouring into the cream cheese icing then used white icing in tubes you can get from the baking aisle, drew a circle round a dot on top (like a bullseye) and then dragged a cocktail stick outwards to make the spiders webs.
The great thing about Halloween of course is that if stuff looks a bit messy and gruesome rather than perfect, it all adds to the effect and frankly I don't have patience for perfect decoration!
And speaking of gruesome, the next creation I made looks fantastically gross but actually is a pretty tasty little treat - devilled egg eyeballs! To make these, boil the eggs for about 12 minutes and then run them under cold water until they're cold again. Peel them, slice them in half longways and scoop the yolks out into a bowl. Blend the yolks with 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise for about every 6 yolks then use the mixture to refill the holes left by the yolks. Next, blend about a tablespoon of cream cheese with some warm water until thinned down and smooth then gently smooth a thin covering over the egg yolks so you have a nice white surface. Push a slice of pimento-stuffed green olive into each one and then if you want to make them really disgusting-looking, mix a tablespoon of tomato juice with a few drops of tabasco and then dip a cocktail stick in the mixture and drag it through the cream cheese to make your eyeballs 'bloodshot'.
