Category: Cooking Experiment

I’ve been enjoying New Columbia’s fall/winter seasonal “ginavit” quite a bit the past few weeks. They’re having a cocktail contest, so I figured I would throw out this easy yet complex cocktail as my entry. It’s adapted from the “Complement Cocktail” served in Copenhagen. I chose to flip the ratios to accentuate the ginavit over the straight gin. The sweetness of the maraschino helps to counter all the savory sensations from the caraway, dill and star anise.

Ingredients:

Ice
1 1/2 ounces Ginavit
3/4 ounce Green Hat gin
2 dashes maraschino liqueur
1 star anise or sprig of dill

Directions:

Fill a cocktail shaker two-thirds full with ice. Add the gin, aquavit and liqueur; shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled martini glass, garnish with star anise or dill and serve.

Let’s just call “Sweet Blueberry Breakfast Biscuits” what they really are: scones. Like I said before, there are definite trends in the cookbook, and one is scones/biscuits. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it just feels repetitive sometimes. But I like blueberries, so I liked these too. A tad on the dry side, but otherwise tasty with some morning coffee.
Next up is butter. Mmm… Butter.

Maybe not everyone is into bananas, I dunno. For whatever reason though, the Banana Layer Cake just wasn’t as popular as I expected. We brought it to the curling club, and had some leftovers, so I brought it to work the next day too. And even after that, I still had one piece left (that I enjoyed myself). I liked it anyway. The basic recipe was two layers of banana flavored cake, and chocolate icing. The twist was that there were slices of banana layered in with the icing between the two layers. Maybe it was just too hard to eat at work. Oh well, moving on, next up is blueberry, which my daughter has been gleefully throwing around the house this morning.

Lisa’s on a roll, making “Brown Sugar-Apricot Bars” last night. They’re a fruity, non-chocolate alternative to brownies. Nice and moist, with small amounts of walnuts and coconuts to balance the flavor. Troy at work now wants this recipe in addition to the vanilla bean cream cake. I just can’t get the Rolling Stones song out of my head. “Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?”
Next up should be bananas, which got glossed over last time when Lisa made apricot scones immediately followed by banana-chocolate chip scones.

Round 2 of the Cooking Experiment began this weekend with a new almond recipe: “Sweet Almond and Chocolate Chip Drop Biscuits.” I’ve already noticed that there’s a bit of a repeating theme to the recipes, as there have been a couple of very similar drop biscuit/scone type recipes. They’re very similar in texture and taste, just using the different core ingredient. That doesn’t make them bad, in fact, these little things were actually very good. I definitely liked them more than the first almond recipe (Lisa liked making these ones more than that first one too!), and they were popular with the curling bonspiel crowd as well. They weren’t as dry as previous scones, and the little bits of almonds gave it an interesting texture too.
Next up is apricot again.

The final ingredient of Baking by Flavor was Vanilla. Lisa picked “Vanilla Bean Cream Cake.” Vanilla gets a bad rap for being plain, the anti-chocolate. It also loses some panache when the only vanilla you’ve tasted is vanilla extract. But take actual vanilla beans as an ingredient, and it’s actually very flavorful. My co-workers are burning through the cake now, and each one is commenting on how surprised they are, and each one is enjoying it (many have come back for seconds, and it’s only noon). The cake reminded me of something when I first took a bite, but it’s escaping me right now. Looks like I’ll have to have some more to jog my memory!
So now Lisa’s run through each ingredient of the book at least once. But have no fear, she’s starting over at the beginning all over again!
Update: I’ve now gotten two (TWO!) confirmations, from Tony and Troy, that this was their favorite recipe so far. Wow!